aperture01
Technical User
This might be a bit confusing so bare with with me here. Anyone can help it's not equipment specific.
We just got a new Roland Wide Format CAMM-1 printer/cutter here. It's used to make vinyl that you see for store signs and what not. I'm having a bit of a dilemma making a cut path. In illustrator i have 3 words layered on top of each other each in the same font in differnet colors slightly offset, which produces a staggered shadow effect. Anyway, in order to set the machine to cut in this pattern I need to stroke the object with a special swatch that the machine recognizes. So my question is. Outside of going into photoshop and using the magic wand and exporting my paths to illustrator (which works well but creates slight jaggies in the cut path in the shape of pixels, or tracing it with the pen tool (which won't be as clean as it can be, is there a way to combine these three layers of text and then stroke around them in illustrator.
Here's what I tried:
I've tried creating outlines then using the pathfinder palette to merge the paths together. This combines the artwork but manages to eliminate one of the layers. And also when i make a stroke on the object it follows the stroke path of each individual layer of the merge. Which basically means the machine is going to cut everywhere there is a stroke (very bad) when i just want it to cut around the object.
If this is all confusing. Think of the photoshop magic wand tool. When you select an object it outlines the outside of the object and as long as the layers are merged you can move everything or create a stroke around several objects. That makes sense as that's a raster based program. I need something similar to that here.
Or, if that's still too complicated you ever see a store sign where it has the words then has a white outline around it that is in contour with the text. I want to do that except i have three layers of text that if flattened would be one object.
So what i'm saying is I want to have one outline path around everything that just outlines the objects and doesen't follow every stroke path of the object.
Ahh this is confusing, no one is going to understand what i'm saying. Or maybe someone will, as you can see this problem has been bothering me for some time.
We just got a new Roland Wide Format CAMM-1 printer/cutter here. It's used to make vinyl that you see for store signs and what not. I'm having a bit of a dilemma making a cut path. In illustrator i have 3 words layered on top of each other each in the same font in differnet colors slightly offset, which produces a staggered shadow effect. Anyway, in order to set the machine to cut in this pattern I need to stroke the object with a special swatch that the machine recognizes. So my question is. Outside of going into photoshop and using the magic wand and exporting my paths to illustrator (which works well but creates slight jaggies in the cut path in the shape of pixels, or tracing it with the pen tool (which won't be as clean as it can be, is there a way to combine these three layers of text and then stroke around them in illustrator.
Here's what I tried:
I've tried creating outlines then using the pathfinder palette to merge the paths together. This combines the artwork but manages to eliminate one of the layers. And also when i make a stroke on the object it follows the stroke path of each individual layer of the merge. Which basically means the machine is going to cut everywhere there is a stroke (very bad) when i just want it to cut around the object.
If this is all confusing. Think of the photoshop magic wand tool. When you select an object it outlines the outside of the object and as long as the layers are merged you can move everything or create a stroke around several objects. That makes sense as that's a raster based program. I need something similar to that here.
Or, if that's still too complicated you ever see a store sign where it has the words then has a white outline around it that is in contour with the text. I want to do that except i have three layers of text that if flattened would be one object.
So what i'm saying is I want to have one outline path around everything that just outlines the objects and doesen't follow every stroke path of the object.
Ahh this is confusing, no one is going to understand what i'm saying. Or maybe someone will, as you can see this problem has been bothering me for some time.