Stephen Marsh said:
1) A CAD file format may be a better exchange format between two CAD packages than AI/PDF file format, perhaps the less than ideal results are due to using AI/PDF.
I've experimented with DXF/DWG, etc. The PDF export is by far the easiest for us to work with. The various reformatting that I need to do is most easily automated with files that the prepress tools at my disposal can deal with. (AutomationEngine, etc.)
Stephen Marsh said:
2) In the case of the mapping of palette colours, this should be possible upstream, an export preset could be created to export the palette colour names as you require (although if you have no control or contact with the upstream creator there is not much which can be done). I would be happy to try to help with the Arden Impact CAD side of things, send me a private message if you would like to explore the upstream options.
You are correct that I am working with Arden Impact CAD. There is basically zero functionality in mapping palettes on export. With extreme patience I explained repeatedly to Arden that the palette mapping functionality in the plot dialog needs to be added to the export dialog and expanded upon there. This might be paraphrasing but "I don't see that happening" was the response I got. I'll be in contact via pm. Perhaps you have a script of some sort to get around this?
Stephen Marsh said:
Chevalier, in your sample file, the only fills that I am finding are the text label dimensions - is this correct? You wish for the text labels to no longer be filled and to only have a 0.5pt stroke?
That is correct. I also want the lines of the die line with 0pt strokes to be 0.5pt. I found a (extremely painful) way to do this with the export dialog in Impact which consists of setting up export configuration for every single line type.
On Arden
To be honest Arden don't seem the least bit keen to work with me to achieve what I am trying to achieve. ESKO truly is a four letter word with them. They don't seem to give a damn about what happens downstream on the prepress side and only on the die production side. If I were the decision maker at my company I am at the point where I would make the very painful call to move to ArtiosCAD. We have a lot more to gain by switching than we have to loose. That is not to say that I feel Artios is better than Impact as a CAD application.
On ESKO
Taking the above into consideration this is a two way street with Arden and ESKO. I have reached out to them as well towards making a way to convert files from Impact into ARD without a full fledged ArtiosCAD install. They provided no help at all. I reached out to other friendly companies that I knew have ESKO Prepress and Arden CAD. I found in every single instance a lot of manual rework on the prepress side and in once instance the prepress department had its own parallel Artios CAD system.
On work-arounds
Being tenacious and persistent I went out and got a demo copy of studio for Illustrator and created a work around. It's manual as all get-out but in general it works and works well thus we bought some copies of studio for Illustrator. I am now trying to automate the die cleanup from Impact so that I need only set folding angles, substrate and export as an ARD. This is why I am bringing Pitstop Action Lists into the mix. My Rube Goldberg machine
will run and run well come hell or high water.
