Hello all,
In a nutshell I currently have an Epilog Fibermark laser engraver and have been using Avery Design Pro 5 and 5.5 to communicate with it to engrave serial numbers on aluminum parts. For 3 years I was able to freely design templates for my parts, but recently the software has stopped allowing me to create new templates.
I contacted Epilog and they strongly recommend using CorelDraw to communicate with the engraver, so I got a trial and have begun to test it out and love it. The problem I am running into at the moment is I need to be able to add a specific serial number to my parts, I need the value to increase 1 for every part I print on and I need it to save what serial number I was at at the end of my printing session so I can pickup where I left off the next time I need to print.
Example:
Day 1 - I print 400 copies of <part x> and my serial numbers count from 120345 - 120744, I can then hit save and close the program.
Day 2 - I open the <part x> file and print 250 copies and my serial numbers then start where left off on day 1 and count 120745 - 120994, once again I can save and close.
Does anybody know how probable it is to get this program to do that for me, or if there is another program that can do something similar? My engraving is very basic, its 2 rows of arched text with 1 row of linear text (the serial number) at the bottom to make kind of a circle. Any help would be greatly appreciated and if pictures are of any help I can see what I can do.
Thanks in advance!
Rhenny You can email them from there web sites, Make sure you tell john what you are wanting, he maybe able to make you one, I've been after him to write one for me that will go next store and raid the beer out of the guys icebox, but he hasn't done it yet.
Goof Luck, Grorge
Rhenny said:Does anybody know how probable it is to get this program to do that for me?
TheSignGuy, thanks, I think I will try emailing John today. Let me know when he gets that beer program up and running.
Jeff Harrison, thanks that video is almost exactly what I want. My only problem now is my data I need to enter is only the serial number. For some reason when I enter my desired serial number in column A and fill it down to my stop point (in my case it is 240899 filled down to 1000000) and save it as a csv Corel says it can't load it but when I fill column A with "S/N" filled to down to 1000000 and then enter my serial numbers in column B filled the same Print Merge only recognizes the first S/N and the first serial number of 240899. Am I doing something wrong or do I have to have 2 columns of information? Am I correct in thinking print merge wants 2 variable entries in excel, or can i get by just using 1?
I want to thank everyone again, I do feel that I am making progress!
I can't think why print merge would require two columns. But equally, if you do find you must create a dummy column to make it work, there's no reason why you should need to use the data from the dummy column.
One thing that might be happening ... when you save as CSV, you get various options for the delimiters. You need to set the same options when opening in CorelDraw.
Another comment I've seen is that numbers may be harder to get working than text -- but you can change the column format to text before saving the CSV, and/or can use double quotes as delimiters to ensure they are recognised as text not numbers.
Thanks harryLondon!
Ive done some playing with it, I still cannot get it to work with only one filled in column, however I took your advice with the dummy column and that seems to do the trick. NOW the problem I have is after I get my S/N in place and hit print it takes FOREVER to load the print screen. My first attempt was with a data base that counted from 240000 - 1000000 and my computer basically gave me the finger, so I created a new data base that counted from 1 - 5000 which did work but it took about 3 minutes to get to the print screen. Once I got there i clicked on preview to select how many I wanted to print and it started slowly counting from 1 to 5000 again, but I dont want to have to wait through that every time I use it.
NOW my question is: Can I have a data base that is say 250,000 numbers strong, but doesn't necessarily have to have every number in the data base read everytime I want to print? Our print templates are 100 pieces or less so we will NEVER need to print more than 100 at a time.