Switching to Illustrator…

[sgu]

Hello,
i'm currently working in a printing company with the latest Artpro, doing mostly wine labels, and my boss is talking about switching to Illustrator.
My question is : is there an alternative to the Artpro stepper in Illustrator ? I did a lot of research, but i didn't find anything. And i really don't know how to work without the stepper stuff ; i don't see myself doing all this manually…

Thanks for your help (and sorry, i'm not sure my english is that good)

[jeffkin15]

It depends on what kind of stepping you are doing. Esko has Powerlayout for Illustrator that allows you to do tabular step and repeat via plug in. Power layout will eventually do all of the Cad based and nested but this is not going to be in until Drupa 2012. So, yes tabular. No nested or cad based.

[michaelejahn]

Hello,
i'm currently working in a printing company with the latest Artpro, doing mostly wine labels, and my boss is talking about switching to Illustrator.
My question is : is there an alternative to the Artpro stepper in Illustrator ? I did a lot of research, but i didn't find anything. And i really don't know how to work without the stepper stuff ; i don't see myself doing all this manually…

Thanks for your help (and sorry, i'm not sure my english is that good)

We are a reseller of PaSharp - it offers Nested S&R with station numbers and quite a few other things (trapping), and is an Illustrator Plug-in

Compose Color Blog: PaSharp Nested Step & Repeat

[Lukas Engqvist]

@ Michael: Oh no you opened a PDF in illy

[michaelejahn]

it was a PDF file that was created in Illustrator, never a problem when you do that.

[John W]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it manually, and its super fast if you know how!

Once you have the step distances and a one-up positioned; x and y from say a CAD machine or even just measuring in Illustrator or by a written layout, the step and repeat process is nearly instant using the command K (Mac) to set the cursor distance. Then hold down the option key and click the move arrow repeatedly to the number of steps over. Then reset the cursor to the other direction, marquee all the just stepped positions and option click the arrow to go the other way. Takes all of 45 seconds! We place the station number on the one up file to be stepped, then move the first position station number to another Illy layer and simply reset the station numbers after the stepping to suit our scheme. Since we work from a Cad layout which gives us the x and y distances, we can beat the time it takes with an auto-template program such as Pandora or ArtPro when combo layouts are always new ones. Now if you are stepping 128 up or using a previously made template, well that is slower, manually but not by much!

John W

[bprint_tampabay]

Why not just do the layout in InDesign?

Isn't that what it's intended for?

Just asking....

[danprtr]

Why not just do the layout in InDesign?

Isn't that what it's intended for?

Just asking....

See your point and we have gone that way on some jobs. As screen graphic printers (plastic, decals) printing mostly spot color, it is nice to be able to step&repeat right in Illy. Especially true when there is no trapping or you can manually trap simple objects on 2 to 10up impositions.

Will experiment with John W's suggestion and Pasharp. Our experience was Esko's option was expensive (~$8k if I remember). Another more economical plugin is Flexostep.

[bprint_tampabay]

I understand that you want to work straight out of Illustrator.

I also believe that the basic design of the program was not intended to do what you want.

Just my opinion, but that's why we have different programs.

When we have Creative Suite, why do you want to step and repeat out of Illustrator?

[circa_bc]

Ive been using PowerLayout by Esko in illustrator and it works great, a few things i've like to change but i believe i have a 'modified/dummed down' version for my HP IN100 SmartStream RIP. Either way, fairly simple plug-in to use.