Equios vs Trueflow 7

[marvinlvr]

We just upgraded to Equios. I'm finding it very unintuitive and hard to learn. The manual is translated very badly from Japanese and doesn't make much sense to me. First time I've been beaten by a piece of software. I struggled to make a simple 4up work and turn step and repeat job. Anyone know where to get better tutorials?

 

[DavidSW]

We just upgraded to Equios. I'm finding it very unintuitive and hard to learn. The manual is translated very badly from Japanese and doesn't make much sense to me. First time I've been beaten by a piece of software. I struggled to make a simple 4up work and turn step and repeat job. Anyone know where to get better tutorials?

Where abouts are you in the world?

 

[marvinlvr]

Where abouts are you in the world?

Rialto, CA

 

[DavidSW]

Rialto, CA

Since you are in California, that is a fair distance from me, or I could come to show you how it works. To come there proves expensive.

Have you tried getting help from DSEA? I really took no more that 5 days to get my head around it. 7.3 is more flexible than 7.2.

 

[Johu]

I have to go with David here, 7.3 is a big leap forward in terms of usability. Most of all I like the ease of just picking my plate, sheet and mark set from saved presets. On top if that the new way of imposing for example business cards without any bleed or margin in between is so easy now.

Btw Marvin, I know it is probably foolish to even think to get an instructor from UK to California, but I must admit David does a good job. He was my very first trainer in TF 1.x back in 2000

 

[Chivajn]

Have they built in Trap-Editor yet? Or is it still a $10,000 Acrobat plug-in?

 

[PrintMaster]

Currently on latest version on Trueflow and about to make a jump to either Eqious or try something new like Prinergy. We are using Metrix on our layout side and further doing some research in regards to what is better to use and compliment Metrix.

 

[Johu]

Currently on latest version on Trueflow and about to make a jump to either Eqious or try something new like Prinergy. We are using Metrix on our layout side and further doing some research in regards to what is better to use and compliment Metrix.

Well the new imposition in Equios is somewhat like metrix. I think the ganging option for example bears a lot of similarities to Metrix. At this point I can't see that Metrix can do much more (if at all) that Equios can with the execption of calculating price for a print job. The reason Metrix was introduced by Screen was because you couldn't do everything with Flatworker. The definite up side of Equios is that the imposition software is inside the client and in all clients without any restrictions on either the size of imposition or the user amount.

To me Equios was a huge jump in usability and now that it is in version 3 the imposition has become even more flexible. Depending on the size of your organization the limitless user count can be a big benefit financially. Not to mention the fact that Equios is still an update to Trueflow.

 

[PrintMaster]

Well the new imposition in Equios is somewhat like metrix. I think the ganging option for example bears a lot of similarities to Metrix. At this point I can't see that Metrix can do much more (if at all) that Equios can with the execption of calculating price for a print job. The reason Metrix was introduced by Screen was because you couldn't do everything with Flatworker. The definite up side of Equios is that the imposition software is inside the client and in all clients without any restrictions on either the size of imposition or the user amount.

To me Equios was a huge jump in usability and now that it is in version 3 the imposition has become even more flexible. Depending on the size of your organization the limitless user count can be a big benefit financially. Not to mention the fact that Equios is still an update to Trueflow.

Thank you, that's very informative ! We bought two licenses with Metrix as a testing grounds for now to compliment TF, and found out a lot of capabilities Trueflow flat worker could not handle. Aside from being extremely slow with 10 users and large files we feel we needed to upgrade as our workload increased and the amount of users start to increase. Here we are asking around Eqious Screen for reviews and other software but if your telling me Eqious has a intuitive layout worker (similar to Metrix or better) I may hold off on getting more Metrix licenses for now. Would you say this is a good bet? With Trueflow currently it would've made sense for full immersion with Metrix but if Eqious imposition is very intuitive similar to Metrix (gang runs / book work etc) then this can save us quite few bucks. The headaches of setting and attaching different softwares via JDF and teaching staff for imposition + ripping and plating with different companies. This can keep it very simple.

I wanted to add that its mainly for imposition and not costing wise , the ability to "auto" calculate for gang run jobs and book work quickly was a huge decision for us to go Metrix so would you say Eqious would handle this type of work load?

 

[PrintMaster]

Is it a steep learning curve going from TF to Eqious similar to learning a whole new software, or would it be intuitive and may seem like a "upgrade" from its TF software?

 

[Johu]

Is it a steep learning curve going from TF to Eqious similar to learning a whole new software, or would it be intuitive and may seem like a "upgrade" from its TF software?

Well the ticket settings are almost identical to Trueflow. Just few new functions here and there but you should feel at home with them as they are so close to what you have been used to. The imposition is mostly different from flatworker and it has been a while since I have done an imposition with Metrix so I can not remeber well enough how they were made but anyway I think it is closer to metrix than Flatworker.
The imposition is based on the JDF fold catalogue. Meaning that you have a lot of different folding schemes already in the system. There are only few exceptions where I have had to generate folding schemes my self instead of using the availlable ones.
Do I remeber incorrectly that Metrix used the folding of the sheet as basis of numbering in the imposition? If it did then it is similar to what you do in Equios if you create your own impositions instead of using the ones in the system.

I have included some images of auto ganging which should look familiar to a metrix user