designs overlap cutting it twice

[stickerbombranger]

Hello, i have done tons of searching on this forum, but after reading so many threads and not finding an answer, i need to post. please and thank you if you are able to help me!

prequel - i am a graphic designer by trade. i have been using the adobe suite since 5.1.

no, i dont have two layers or extra lines or objects or something - ive looked . i am making the raster images in photoshop when i need to take something someone supplies me (like a photograph they want cut as a sticker) and converting that to vector. once its where it needs to be i usually open it in illustrator (i like photoshop better, i understand i can do the same thing i illustrator first - the vector tools are less easy to use in illustrator in my opinion). so then i delete any boarders, outlines or whatever extra stuff shouldnt be cut. sometimes after i clean up a raster image in photoshop, then put it into illustrator and live paint\live trace it and clean it up. after its all set i merge all the paths together making sure everything is perfect and save it as *.ai. then i save it as a *.svg and import it in SCA. i place the image on the mat in SCA, size it how i like, and cut it.

8 times of 10 it works perfect and cuts perfect. 1\10 of the time the program freezes and i need to reboot it - no big deal.

here is the problem - 1\10 of the time the cutter will just cut the same design in the same spot twice. i have gone into the designs multiple times, starting back from scratch with the raster image. maybe re-saving the *.ai, opening it back in photoshop - merging layers, redoing a live paint\live trace - anything i can think of. but once it cuts twice its a better time saver to start back from scratch with a new file that has not been "currpoted" some how. somtimes starting from scratch - as long as i use the same raster as input it still wont work. i have to source a new image because im stuck with this double cut!


i really need a fix for this. i just spent like 5 hours making a sticker for a friend who was in the army - being as meticliouos as i could to make it awesome - and it cuts twice. im about to go insane.

attached the file. please tell me i did something stupid that i overlooked because i was burnt out. thank you for taking the time to read this - i know other people have had similar issues - but this i cant explain.

and just for reference - we bought a vinyl cutter from USCutter
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Vinyl-Cutte ... 46043e1d7e

[HeatherM]

For some reason I can't open your file in Inkscape, but I can import it into SCAL. You do have double layers. You have both the black layers and the white spaces as white layers. I'm attaching a screenshot of my eCAL layer window with one of the white spaces highlighted to show you.

101st airborne.PNG (126.54 KiB) Viewed 4712 times

I believe this is an Adobe issue. Check to see if you used both a fill and a stroke. If you use both in Adobe products then you will get double layers. It is OK to use both a stroke and a fill in Inkscape. I don't know about CorelDraw.

Did you know that there is a plug-in to send your file directly from AI to SCAL3/eCAL? It isn't worth the bother in CS6, but works well in CS5. http://www.craftedge.com/download/download_extras.html

[stickerbombranger]

For some reason I can't open your file in Inkscape, but I can import it into SCAL. You do have double layers. You have both the black layers and the white spaces as white layers. I'm attaching a screenshot of my eCAL layer window with one of the white spaces highlighted to show you.

101st airborne.PNG

I believe this is an Adobe issue. Check to see if you used both a fill and a stroke. If you use both in Adobe products then you will get double layers. It is OK to use both a stroke and a fill in Inkscape. I don't know about CorelDraw.

Did you know that there is a plug-in to send your file directly from AI to SCAL3/eCAL? It isn't worth the bother in CS6, but works well in CS5. http://www.craftedge.com/download/download_extras.html

oh man!! fill+stroke! i totally bet thats what it is. the other images i was doing went straight from to illustrator to SCA without modifications - this one i tweaked for a while until it was perfect - i prolly did put in the line stroke. i didnt think that could even be the issue!

ill see what i can do about flattening the image - i didnt think that should be the issue.

ill see what happens! thanks for the link to the plugin. ill see if it helps too!

thank you

[DogCarbon]

HeatherM is the greatest person on the earth, isn't she?

Thanks Heather for taking your time to answer these questions!

[mitsim]

Hope you got your 'Fix'. I, too, have worked with Photoshop for years and years, and I make lots of my cut files in Photoshop, then take it to ai to do the trace. After I trace, I select only the white space (then go to similar fill color to get any other small inside white spaces), then delete them. Then I save the image as a svg file. I've never had a problem with double cutting.
Good luck!

[stickerbombranger]

i just wanted to say thank you because the problem has been solved since then - once i used the import function built into SCAL - no more double cutting!

ill just stick with photoshop vector -> high res raster -> SCAL import -> cut

its much simpler than trying to push it through illustrator and convert to an SVG.

thank you