Trotec Training

[Chris J Anderson]

Awesome video's Scott, thank you for your efforts.
After using an Epilog print driver for years, its hard to get your head around the Trotec job setup, but I can see it will be very powerful once I get used to it.

@Shawn regarding macbook.
I use a pac book pro with win8.1 running in fusion.
Only loaded Trotec software yesterday, it works a treat.
Coreldraw x6 runs nice on it as well, and I use Epilog as well, all good. (USB).

[Jiten Patel]

Nice job on the videos!

I find using markers to place multiple jobs easier than using grid-lines as they are harder to accidentally move. We have tons of jigs, so we set each up, position the head, use F8 to mark the position out and do the same for the rest of the jig. Save the file, label the jig and done. If only there was an option to position multiple times and snap to marker at the same time and positioning a 100+ jobs a bed takes far too much time!

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks to all who have commented. I have many more plans, but I updated my desktop computer and I cannot locate my Corel disc, so the device I captured the videos on isn't available to use without that disc. I've turned the place upside down about 5 times and can't figure out where in the world the disc would could be. At this point, I'm dead in the water until I buy another version of Corel, which isn't in the plans at the moment. I have the key, I just don't have the disc. If anyone has X5 and wants to loan me the disc long enough to load it and use my key, I'm happy to do so and return it.

[Scott Shepherd]

Duh.....googled CorelDraw X5 and downloaded it from Corel. Entered my key and we are back in action on the Corel front.

Wish it didn't take me 3 months to figure that out!

[Andrew Holloway]

Good to hear you are back in action. I am a new Trotec owner and I found your videos very helpful. Thankyou.

[Dan Hintz]

Steve,

If you need a (hard)copy of the disc, let me know...

[Bert Kemp]

Steve

You're the spittin' image of Festus.

He does kinda look like Festus

[Ross Moshinsky]

Thanks for answering my other questions this weekend Steve. I just watched your two videos and I have a pretty simple question along the same lines to what we were discussing with the ULS.

Video #2. You're sending over the "Trotec Training" plate. You have the plate setup as 3.99" x 1.365". My question is, why type the same size again in the Trotec Print Preferences? Why not select "Take from Application" or use a different option in the drop down menu rather than "User Defined"?

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks for answering my other questions this weekend Steve. I just watched your two videos and I have a pretty simple question along the same lines to what we were discussing with the ULS.

Video #2. You're sending over the "Trotec Training" plate. You have the plate setup as 3.99" x 1.365". My question is, why type the same size again in the Trotec Print Preferences? Why not select "Take from Application" or use a different option in the drop down menu rather than "User Defined"?

No problem Ross. That's a GREAT question! My answer is simple. Because I can't get that to work I've tried it many times. I even tried it after our PM's the other day. Nope, still can't get it to work. In theory, it's supposed to do exactly what you were asking about. In CorelDraw, in the options page, in the global settings, there's a section of check boxes and one of them says "Send Bezier curves". There's another box in that section that says "Allow job size to be sent" or something like that. I checked that box, which I'm told I have to, to make it work. However, when I send a 2" x 3" job from Corel, with a page size of 17" x 24" in the actual driver, it should send a 2" x 3" job over, but it doesn't, it sends a 17" x 24" job over.

Since I don't use it, I've never tried to flush that bug out. I was told years ago that that feature was intended to be used with AutoCAD. However, I got a call from someone in Universal several months ago, asking me why I didn't use it. I explained it was told that it was for AutoCAD and they said that it was no longer for that alone, but worked much better now across a lot of programs and that I should start using it. I tried it immediately, emailed one of their application guys and asked him if I was doing it right and he told me I had all the settings right. However, it never worked.

I very well could have something set wrong, but I've not tried it since I'm so used to not using it. But in theory, it should do exactly what you were trying to do.

[Ross Moshinsky]

I had a demo with a Speedy 300 and I can half answer my own question.

1. The feature only works on Corel Draw X5+ (According to the manual).
2. It seems to read the info from the saved Corel Draw file. So if you make your plate size 5x7. Save it. Then send it as "Take from Application" it seemed to work. If you make a change, don't save, and then send it over, it will send over whatever was saved in the file. If no file is saved, it seemed to default to previous sizes or the size in the driver. I didn't really figure that out.

It seems the best method remains to draw a box around the artwork and have it crop to the artwork as the default. Obviously use a color that won't result in any engraving or cutting.

It's funny how you can take for granted little features.

[Mike Null]

Ross
I'm not sure this applies but you can save custom plate sizes. More often than not I select the item I want to engrave and send it without a plate. I have my default set to quarter sheet which is the bulk of my engraving.

If I want to move the laser to a specific point on the material I use "engrave selected" and "minimize to job size".

[Ross Moshinsky]

Yeah, there are a lot of different ways to tackle this. None of them are a real issue. I'm just trying to avoid typing in the plate size twice or having a lot of presets. Drawing a box around the plate and doing "minimize to job size" or the equivalent on a ULS is not the biggest deal in the world.

I've found more and more people are used to running sheet goods and we only do that part of the time. A lot of what we engrave is finished goods and sizing is incredibly important. A lot of this stuff is not standard sized anymore. Acrylics that used to be very close to 3.5" x 5" are now only relatively close to those specs. Being a little careless can result in things getting off 1/32+ pretty easily and that's when the naked eye can start noticing things being off center.

[Bob WrightNC]

Steve, as you know, I've been asking about the software for the rayjet versus the speedy 300. Looks to me like you could do ganging of jobs quite a bit easier in this software than on the rayjet. Does the software "store" jobs for you to pull from, or does it only have like the last 20 or so that went into the que?

[Scott Shepherd]

Yes Bob, it stores them in a que. You could have 1000's in there, I suppose. You can also save a job out of Job Control as well, so if you have really repetitive things and don't want to leave them in the que, you could save them. It's rare for me to do that, I tend to just keep the repeat jobs in the que and drag and drop them on the plate when I need them, then put them back in the que when I'm done.

[Bob WrightNC]

Steve, as you know, I've been asking about the software for the rayjet versus the speedy 300. Looks to me like you could do ganging of jobs quite a bit easier in this software than on the rayjet. Does the software "store" jobs for you to pull from, or does it only have like the last 20 or so that went into the que?

Ah ha, answer in the second video. Wow, this really has me thinking about the software very hard. Thanks.