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!
Though the print merge is useful for occasional short runs, it does have limitations. Speed is one of them. Another, from a numbering perspective, is that it relies on you to create a list of numbers and to remember where you left off before.
From that point of view, using a macro is much better. Properly written, there should be no need to use print merge, no need to remember anything between sessions and the performance should be close to that of printing a normal unnumbered page.
But to my surprise, the only macro I could find actually uses print merge to perform the numbering. So the performance is probably going to be no better than what you are presently doing.
At this point, I'm strongly tempted to try writing an experimental macro to prove how fast it could do the job, but I have a busy week approaching and I know I won't have time to finish it until at least the following week.
Rhenny said:Our print templates are 100 pieces or less so we will NEVER need to print more than 100 at a time.
You could try this, which I did for something else. I'm using open office not excel, so I'm not sure if the programming is the same.
Note: replication is different from pasting -- it means that any edits you make to A1 later will automatically propagate to cells A2 through A100. Also you need to save the master table in native (XLS or ODS) form not as CSV,
For your first session, you could use your master table to export to CSV, which will export the actual numbers, not the formula.
For your second session, you could edit A1 so that it says =ROW()+1100. The replication takes care of the subsequent rows, so no further editing is needed and this time you will export 1101-1200 to your CSV,
Result will be a simple short table that is easy to update and should work a bit more efficiently until we can devise something better.
Rhenny said:Am I doing something wrong or do I have to have 2 columns of information?
You don't need to have S/N as variable data. You can get by with only the serial changing. It depends on how you want the final art to look.
I think gimme numbers macro will solve your problem, I'll make video for you.
harryLondon said:At this point, I'm strongly tempted to try writing an experimental macro to prove how fast it could do the job, but I have a busy week approaching and I know I won't have time to finish it until at least the following week.
I made it many years ago... video coming in a moment.
Here's a sample for 100, then 500 of the same thing using Gimmee Numbers. It works in X6 as shown. Watch full-screen in HD for better clarity.