Craft Edge

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

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.
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

HeatherM wrote: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

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

Thanks Heather for taking your time to answer these questions!

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!

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