Heildelberg Prinect

[jctremblay]

Hello all...

I'm looking for some unbiased feedback from peoples using Heidelberg Prinect workflow. How good this workflow is? Or how bad? What the pain point of implementing and using it? What about the learning curve for peoples using a Rampages Systems for years? Any feedback appreciated.

 

[mhammontree]

We have used Prinect for the past year, Prior to that we used Rampage for 5 years with Preps. The Prinect work flow is super fast and Signa is so much easier than Preps once you use it you will never want to use Preps again it is so fast and easy. As far as the work flow in Cockpit it is easy as well. It has made my job so much easier and our work flow has increased requiring less personnel.

 

[toronar]

We have been using Prinect 4 for 3 months now, and I have kind of mixed feelings about it.
There are some "features" in it that consume more time than our manual workflow before.
Other features allow us to do things that were not possible before, and all together it works ok.

My only real gripe is with their support:
The support hotline is kind of helpful; I reported a lot of bugs already, some are fixed, but most continue to exist along the way.
A real killer are 2 bugs in Cockpit and the APPE that render outputs differently for imposition proofs and imposition outputs; both without a solution so far which has forced us to use the CPSI-RIP (which does not have these bugs) instead of the faster APPE-RIP.

Granted, it is the end of the year and christmas is near, but these are real showstopper bugs that should be fixed fast.


It is a good workflow, you can do quick and nice jobs with it. SignaStation is quite nice to impose with in some aspects, but in others it makes it quite complicated in comparison to other imposition software out there (OneVision Impose/Secare). There are still a lot of parts missing for a fully automated workflow in my opinion, but it is getting there. Albeit slowly.

Integration with your pressroom will be a breeze if you use Heidelberg presses.
MIS integration will be a problem, even if you use Heidelberg's own MIS. A lot of information/settings won't port over to the workflow correctly. If you really consider Prinect, let them demo the whole package for you. Pay attention to integration with your MIS and especially resubmitted jobs and what happens with updated MIS-information in Cockpit-Jobs.

Regards,
toronar

 

[apepp]

...i agree with toronar, our experience with heidelberg prinect has been overall a good one, the system is very in depth and is clearly expandable to cater for automated guillotines if you want to take it that far. We used to have Agfa Apogee X, and while Preps is a fine impo software package, signa is a very clever piece of software once you bend your mind around the wizard steps involved. Being a German company they certainly know how to engineer, and have assisted greatly in complete PCM of all presses and calibration to proofing devices which are the best they have ever performed...

...definite annoying bugs include signa not talking well with cockpit at times, if your not careful you can impose a large job to find it hasn't saved, but this might be because we only have one licence across multiple users, which can be a frustration in itself having to relaunch all the time...

...i find the color mapping interface annoying to use, and there are problems mapping spot colors to another spot color which is in turn converted to a process mix, can look OK on PDF preview, but won't output...

...i do miss apogee X imposed renders though and the way apogee deals with mixing preps templates and re-ordering impos, took me an age to work out how to re-order signatures in signa, not as obvious as you might like it to be...

...i'm not keen on the web browser interface with the server, i find that frustrating to deal with...

...but having said all that, the rendering speeds are excellent...

 

[Vee]

I'd bet after you work with Prinect for the length of time you used Apogee, you will like Prinect as well if not more that AX. I could be wrong, but time will tell.
Best,
Vee