Hello all!! Im excited to have found this forum in hopes that I can get some help/questions answered and sorted out. I have worked with Vcarve in a professional setting in the past but everything I know was self taught.
My main concern/problems are, what i think, is compatibility issues from Adobe illustrator ran on a Mac, to Vcarve on a Windows computer. I work in the sign industry and we are starting to make tactile letters and numbers in house.
The files i am creating in illustrator are very basic, consisting of 0.25 stroke on an outlined text or number set. There are no layers or color fills in these Adobe files.
When I open these files in Vcarve, I am consistently getting double lines appearing in Vcarve. I have spent countless hours double and triple checking that there are only single lines in my adobe files. I know that I can use the welding tool to combine the lines, but I’m losing far too much time having to go through the welding process on each individual file, when i am absolutely positive that these double lines do not exist in the original Adobe files.
If it was a few signs at a time, no big deal… but I am working on projects that consist of, on average, 500 to 700 signs
I sincerely appreciate any and all tips, advice and guidance anyone can give me. Hope to hear from yall soon
Hey there, You and I are in very similar positions. I used to work in signage, using illustrator for file creation that Vcarve uses for the CNC.
Your issue with the double lines is because you are using a stroke on your objects. This is both a positive and negative trait in illustrator. If you make your shape and add a stroke and then go into outline view on illustrator it looks like there is only one line, but then you take that file to most any other digital fabrication software like Vcarve then it views your stroke as having an inside and an outside line depending on how your stroke is configured. It may also have a third line in the middle indicating the boundary of your objects fill color.
THE FIX
Instead of making your shapes with a stroke (no matter how thin) turn off the stroke and use a fill color to make your shape.
There are exceptions to the rule here and sometimes you want your finished letters on the sign to have a stroke. In that instance I would recommend applying the stroke to the outside of your letters instead of the default setting which centers the stroke on the boundary of the shape. (you have to outline your text in order to apply a stroke to the outside of the letters–annoying I know).
I do this a lot so feel free to ask questions about this stuff and I’m sure I can help you out. This forum is dedicated to other software so you might not be reaching a broader audience with the experience to help you out, but if you want to talk directly then we can chat on instagram @crabtreecreative.