What Software do you recommend?

[John Mc]

Hi All,

Just getting back into Vinyl Cutting as hobby as i uses to have a small business 12 years ago using Art Cut! Basic but worked for me.

I have bought Sign Cut, Cant seem to get it to be reliable, Sometimes works sometimes it doesn't.

I als have to pay monthly for Adobe illustrator and Photoshop to export into sign cut which doesn't seem feasible.

Most software i have looked at also want a monthly membership.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Gino]

Illustrator itself is pretty good. Just use that and forget about all these other Mickey Mouse doo-dads.

 

[John Mc]

Is it possible to cut directly from Illustrator?

 

[2B]

we use Corel Draw and from this we cut directly to our summa using the free plug in WinPlot

 

[OldPaint]

COREL DRAW..... no bridge program. cut right from COREL......TO PLOTTER..... been doing this since 1992))

 

[S'N'S]

I use Vinyl Master Xpt but if your only cutting vinyl there are other, Pro, Lite etc which are cheaper. I've had Corel & Illy and theres to much mucking around to do anything. You can download the demo and try it. :: VinylMaster Demo ::

 

[OldPaint]

corel draw to cutter: i have a ROLAND, SOOOO.. i got to rolanddga site d/l driver......for windows o/s. unpack, and then load to computer, got to corel, select plotter as printer.....set up page.....make haireline and no fill..wala......your cuttin))

 

[Grafix]

I cut from Illustrator direct to winplot

 

[myront]

Corel doesn't require a monthly fee. You buy it, you own it. Form then on you can just buy the upgrade at half the price. Quite possible to go years without needing an upgrade.
DO NOT GET SUCKERED INTO THE STUDENT VERSION.

 

[RyanT]

I've been using Inkscape until I can justify spending the $ on Corel (soon...). Its free, open source, but limited so you have to be creative to get things done. Biggest downside is importing customer .eps files... it's a process. I just export to pdf and import into the cutter software.

 

[bannertime]

I hate saying it, but if I could start over, I'd probably learn Corel. I really don't like or appreciate Adobe's business practices. Corel seems a bit more ethical, just speculation though. I'd still use Flexi, but I'd try Corel to handle everything I don't do in Flexi. Inkscape seems to have a following, free, and it has extensions to cut with as well.