Thick line attributes? Outlines? Strokes?

[Vinyldog]

Our designer keeps sending me text to cut from CS4 with some kind of thin outline or stroke on the letters. It makes the plotter cut the image twice. So I have to select each character separately and delete the ghost image before I can send it to the cutter. I've ask her about it and she says she doesn't know what it is or where it comes from.
I'd like to just delete it with a click if possible. Or maybe just be able to weld it together and change it to an object. It appears I can't delete the outline unless I ungroup everything.
I'm so desperate, I'm doing this on Easter Sunday.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

It sounds like you have strokes on in Illustrator. When there is a stroke it will appear as such in this attachment. You can quickly turn it off by hitting the "/" key on the keyboard

When the stroke is off, that icon will not have any color and you can confirm by looking at the text on screen. Shown on 2nd attachment

 

[AF]

Also if the designer expands the stroke it will do this.

 

[TimToad]

The best way to preserve the integrity of letterforms when creating outlines is to use the "offset path" function under the Objects pulldown. When one simply applies a stroke, it cuts halfway into the edge of a letter and on letters with thick and thin strokes, it can wreak havoc on legibility. Especially on cut vinyl.

It's no surprise that a "designer" still using a decade old version of a software program wouldn't know such a basic fundamental function or why the problem you describe occurs.

 

[Sandman]

This used to happen to me anytime I designed something in Flexi Sign and exported it out to Illustrator. The extra vectors in my case had no stroke and no fill so I just drew a quick box with no fill or stroke, went to select and clicked on select same fill or stroke and deleted the whole bunch art once. If it is a stroke with an actual color, do as above, ungroup everything, select one object that has the extar stroke on it, select same stroke color then hit the stroke slash symbol in your color palette and they will all be gone.

 

[WorxMedia]

What software are you editing the graphics from? This happens to me all the time, depending on the software used (I work in CS6). Easiest solution (in illustrator) to preserve the appearance of the text is to select all, Object path- outline strokes. Select all again - then combine all using your pathfinder pallete. Takes less than 5 seconds. I do it so much I created an action set in illustrator and now it takes me less than a second.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

The only problem with this solution is that doing this creates a font that is slightly thicker since you are combining the outline and original fill into one shape. Not a big deal if the stroke is very thin but it could make a difference if you are trying to match something. It is easier to just simply delete the strokes to begin with.

 

[Vinyldog]

Good advise, thank you. I'll give these ideas a try tomorrow. I am familiar with selecting the slash icon to remove the contour cut color from text. I would just need to know the color of the stroke to delete it. Black I presume. Due to workload I don't have time to get on the internet at work, but I'll find that file and see if these techniques work on it.
Thanks again.

 

[Vinyldog]

FineCut is the plotter driver we use

 

[Vinyldog]

I finally had a chance to look at this file again. With the text selected, the main color was displayed as a question mark, and the stroke as the slash icon. I was not able to duplicate my previous fix of ungrouping or breaking path.

 

[ikarasu]

Upload the file somewhere so we can have a look at it? Unless it's something you can't share.

Where the square is a "?" It usually means you have multiple objects selected that have a different fill color, so it can't display a color.

 

[Vinyldog]

Choosing the Pathfinder command did away with the outline image that was causing the problem. So apparently the designer had already converted the text to an object. I don't recall if I had to un-group before hand. I don't have internet access at work so I have to go from memory, and there is always a lot going on there. I do think possibly the Pathfinder is located on a different menu on CS4 which is what they use at the store, and CS3 which is what I have here at home. On CS3 it's on the "effects" menu.

 

[Bobby H]

It's the nature of the sign business that you have to police customer provided artwork, even art files sent in from other people with actual graphic design jobs. Unless the designer has actually worked in the sign industry before (or had plenty of experience exchanging art files with sign companies) he/she will not think at all about making the artwork friendly to vinyl cutters or routing tables.

Lettering or objects with extra inline/outline paths from the line stroke, outline or path offset effect is just one of the things you have to watch-dog. I don't mind it so much if an outline or path offset effect is "expanded." At least I can hit Ctrl-Y and see the extra paths in the outline view. The one that really gets on my nerves is the practice of laying copies of the same object on top of each other, one object with a fill and the other with an outline effect. The result of this is you may have 2 exact copies of the same source object sitting directly on top of each other. That won't be easy to see unless you're really looking out for it. But the vinyl cutter will sure cut those duplicate objects and even cut clean through the material to do so. There's a lot of "old school" Illustrator users that do this, even though the Path Offset command can do the same thing without all the extra object garbage.

Imported PDF artwork has all of these problems and adds more. Depending on how the PDF was created the file may have all kinds of clipping masks and clipping groups. Some of that stuff will create even more duplicate objects, ones that have no fill or outline stroke. The objects are invisible, but they're still there and a vinyl cutter or routing table will cut them. Astute Graphics' Vector First Aid will delete most (if not all) of these kinds of paths when cleaning up artwork.

Some applications are pretty shifty when creating EPS or AI files. I've seen CorelDRAW do an annoying thing from time to time where it "simulates" compound paths by slicing them during the export process. The application is not very consistent at how it does this. One exported EPS or AI file might be just fine and then another has every compound path sliced up. You'll see the slices when viewing the artwork in wireframe/outline view, but not everyone double-checks that.