Squiggles in my designs visible in Illustrator - affecting cuts

[Geminis076]

Hello, I recently upgraded cutters from a Master Tiger 1000 to a Graphtec CE 5000-60, my Master machine quit on me . I've always created vector images in Macromedia Flash, then would copy and save them as .AI files in my Illustrator 9 because .AI files are good files for my SignGO lite software to read. Results were very good.

If I zoom in very closely in Illustrator, I can see lots of tiny squiggles in most areas where there are curves in the design. Looks differently in Flash, in Flash the lines are very clean and squiggle free, there are very little plot points. As a test I created a quick circle in Flash with the circle tool which created a clean and pure circle, but when copied over to Illustrator, several areas of the clean curves now had squiggles. Grapthtec unfortunately includes the squiggles in the design, I guess the squiggles have always been there but I never had any squiggle issues with the Master Cutter, very obvious with Graphtec cuts.

Here's links to 4 photos of samples in both Illustrator and Flash:

(Flash sample one - without anchor points)

(Flash sample two - with anchor points)

(Illustrator sample one - without anchor points)

(Illustrator sample two - without anchor points)


I can try to play around with increasing the speed but it so far doesn't seem to be helping. Are there any settings I can try that may help? I'm new to the Graphtec machine and using the Cutting Master 2 plug-in. Would really hate to have to re-create all my files, I'm not sure how to create non-text images in Corel or Illustrator - Flash has been really great and easy.

Thanks for any information!

 

[mark-s]

Sample 2 shows the nodes, need to make the curves curve and straght lines
straight.
Called noded editing u can do that in Illustrator.
Takes some time depending on how complex the graphic is.
mark-s

 

[Jester1167]

Flash is designed for the web and animation. It's not really made to export to ai, it's made to import from ai. To progress in this business you would be better off learning Illustrator. The sooner you do, the quicker you will learn you were using the wrong program for the job.

 

[Rick]

What version of Illustrator and have you tried opening them up as .svg's in Illustrator and then re-saving them out in .ai out of Illustrator??

 

[Flame]

Flash is designed for the web and animation. It's not really made to export to ai, it's made to import from ai. To progress in this business you would be better off learning Illustrator. The sooner you do, the quicker you will learn you were using the wrong program for the job.

Heartily agree

 

[Geminis076]

Thanks for the info so far, will look into it. My Illustrator version is 9. The Flash method worked very well with my previous set up, the cuts were clean and bump free. The Flash tools are very easy to use compared to Illustrator's, at least for me but I will practice more with both Illustrator and Corel.

I haven't really been satisfied with tracing programs or the results of many tracing tools, so I've been using the line tool in Flash to trace things on my own - I do have some fairly detailed designs with lots of various line work. I'll search for Illustrator and Corel tutorials.

 

[Geminis076]

Doing research and my CorelDraw X3 seems a little more promising than my Illustrator 9. Trying really hard not to have to re-trace all my designs, but if that's the best way to get better results then oh well, as long as I have good music to listen to while I'm doing it.

This YouTube video is a Corel demo, but it's exactly how I trace and modify an image in Flash so this is a good sign (I only outline, I do not color) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9e5tTCvCls&feature=related

 

[Vinylman]

The fact that you are using Illustrator9 is probably your problem.

Illustrator is at least THREE upgrades ahead of where you are.
The current Ill. is CS4 I believe for the Mac.
This leaves you way behind the curve on using the latest features of Illustrator.

 

[iSign]

I can do just about any vector work I'll ever need in illustrator 9.
I own & use CS4 (and CS3, CS2, CS1, and version 10) but with a few exceptions like envelope distorts, Raster effects & live trace, the other features are mostly for speed and convenience in my opinion...

...for basic sign making Illustrator 9 will be more than you need. No real reason to spend more money, unless you want to.

I mean CS4 is way better, and you should plan on needing to buy it & to learn it eventually... so if you were independently wealthy & just making signs for kicks & giggles... sure, go buy CS4 & don't waste time learning an old version...

...but if saving several hundred dollars is important right now... Illustrator 9 is almost all I've used for the last 5 years. I finally started using CS4, but mostly buy the upgrades to open files sent to me & resist the time to learn each one when Ver. 9 did what I needed already.