Windows 10 and open type fonts

[Bobby H]

The path ahead for "CAS" applications like Flexi looks pretty simple. Such applications will end up being nothing more than a utility to drive a vinyl cutter/plotter. The design features are pointless for being so limited and wrapped in a very dated user interface.

RIP applications already work like this in principal. The applications don't offer any built-in design tools; that work gets done in applications like Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. The RIP application just concentrates on output.

Vinyl cutting or pattern plotting operations don't require as much of a variety of output options as found in RIP software. For lots of users a plugin for CorelDRAW or Illustrator could suffice, as could basic vinyl cutting software bundled with a cutter/plotter. That leaves a more complex (and expensive) application like Flexi looking irrelevant. It can't match the design capabilities of mainstream vector drawing programs and it's not cost effective like a simple vinyl cutting utility would be.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

If one is just talking about cut programs, really, if the cutter uses HPGL (I mention HPGL specifically because that is supported out of the box by at least Linux and Windows (I would imagine with Mac as well, but those that I still have access to, I'm not allowed to mess with them as the owners know that their macs will only be macs in branding of the hardware only after I'm done with the devices), setup on both of which can be done via GUI) and just parses what it needs, no real utility program is needed outside of what comes with the OS. Just set up the cutter as a "printer" with raw HPGL as the language and have at it and just do File->Print to do the cutting. That will require more knowledge on the user's end with Ai/Draw/Inkscape/Designer whatever in setting some things up, but for the most part, should be able to be automated as well via Actions/Macros/Scripts etc. And I would speculate, could probably get more out of it compared to relying on 3rd party to solve it for you, but it does depend on how much/if any time that one wants to invest in that.

Now, if the cutter uses another language, that's something else. At least my older Roland's all use HPGL and I set it on RAW HPGL and the cutters just parse what they need and I'm good to go.