Yani in building mode... he *** at drawing and as accuracy goes he needs a computer. A pencil snapper that can't draw a straight line. Lucky for the tools, like a laser level.
A router "look at those oh so cute joins"
So I did a month of homework and found a few things that are interesting and curious.
https://www.mozaiksoftware.com/
Every wonder how these kitchen companies do the software? Do they draw it up on Autocad from home grown templates?
NUP the whole thing is a package from shop front to shop back.
"Exports to Paperless Shop" It is a parts list but I suspect it includes billing components.
https://kcdsoftware.com/doors-plus/
If doors and drawers are your company’s specialty, KCD Software’s Doors Plus is a stand-alone, template design software to communicate with your nested based CNC router.
Hundreds of templates are included in the software like doors, drawer fronts and dovetail drawer boxes. It’s also easy to create your own one-of-a-kind custom templates. Parametric tool paths can be assigned for your multiple tool operations. Create your own custom libraries for doors, drawers, wine racks, fluted pilasters, valances and more for traditional and CNC manufacturing.
Doors Plus includes over 300 ready-to-use custom component templates. The order-entry system makes it easy to enter your custom items and modify details on the fly. Doors Plus gives you more custom product capacity, flexibility and efficiency than ever before.
What's interesting is the narrow vertical market and the end to end nature of the software.
This dude is inspirational. A retired architect gone work-worker. He did buy a CNC but his first large CNC he made from scratch. Bit of redefinition, what was once a series of specialties as "maker".
https://www.youtube.com/c/frankhowarth
Then the same level of expertise but with metal, this dude. No router he uses a water jet cutter.
https://www.youtube.com/c/FireballTool
You can see in this that someone in Corel got it with Corel CAD. It's not an architect's tool but a maker's tool. There seems to lack the strong connection that other software vendors have managed with toolmakers. It's the tool makers and their products that are key to promoting the software.
Corel have marketing and help teams, I think they should have a 3rd sort of team, relationship manages and user advocates. Dig deep into how to have more pro-motive and supportive relationships with hardware vendors. Corel are pretty much MIA in the marker-sphere on YouTube.
It's YouTube that we all turn to for tutorials. That's where the software recommendations are being listen to.
Neither marketing nor help are in the business of being user advocates and relationship manages. The have their own objectives.
No point in spending money on marketing if the product isn't fit to the market.
So here's me making a software decision... as a newbie, just like I was about to pick Draw for the first time. Near the same rules apply.
I've got the architect using Fusion 360 (in Draw terms Adobe)
The makers using SketchUp (Same engine as CorelCAD)
And me, maybe after 12 months of using many things I might work out what I actually like. I don't have the 12 months for doing that. I'll pretty much have to pick Fusion 360 because of "industry standard" adoption.
Feels a bit like traveling to Interzone to pick a Corel product. "It will be OK, just sniff some more bug powder". Goes to the issue of "industry standard" and actually being it, as opposed to just claiming it. I'd be putting that at the top of the list of all things. Get a handle on what it means and how to be it. Corel could claim "industry standard" in signwriting. They earned that. How was that achieved? Start digging into these other markets using those methods.
There's the means to make the subscription worth $50 a month. Throw in CorelCAD. Most people are unlikely to use it so no skin off Corel's real nose, but it does bring the subscription back to being with the value range of Adobe. CorelCAD could do with the users! It's not in an "out there" place on YouTube.
Agreed, as far as I know the hand held cutters have not been around for more than about 5 years or so.
I got a vendor that has a software proprietary bending and cutting device, flat cut up to .008 aluminum and bending .004 and he can cut up to 6mil polycarbonate, it craps out at 5 x 8 feet. With .004 returns 6" is the limit 4" is better but then you need wide angle LED's.
I just give him an eps of the metal and a color managed PDF for the printed graphic. It's all he can do but he's got good quality, pricing and great customer service.
He put in a hand held cutter for replacement faces and it works well, with signs he's made I've gotten a replacement face with trim cap in 48 hours, I've gotten entire letters in 5 days not bad.
The Goverment and technology today is reshaping the sign industry, the electrical is not much more than simple model railroading. The mechanical is becoming more and more automated and with larger projects, for us supplied art is all conceptual from programs like Sketchup supplied with CAD elevations. We do the rest. That makes it easy, they expect to pay for our services!
Unless we get an entire new or renovation for a mall 99% of commercial design comes from the end user. With franchise work there is a central point for reasonable art, for most single store sign art, it's crap from the buyer, many times some butthole who did a concept in GIMP or some other image editor. In many cases the buyer is disappointed as they thought they had bought useful, art and now 5hey need to pay for design again.
Unfortunately the commercial work is severely depressed in terms of prices, what we're seeing on many large projects is the General Contractor buying signs from the lowest bidder and installing themselves. Making the signs a profit center for them.
Custom work in signs and donor walls is where it's still profitable for me, as a project manager 3 to 5 projects a year makes you a living but the nature of the flow has you running 6 or 7 over a 2 to 3 year period. It and image editing is ALL I do now.
I've been amazed how government documentation has become a real profit center, variance hearing, light dispersal, engineering drawings and consulting. I make as much profit from that as I do the other parts .
In Pennsylvania all cities I've worked in 5 years ago mandated stamped engineer drawings for all hanging signs over 4 square foor and free standing signs over 6 square feet. Light dispersal drawings for all ground lighting in class C cities and above, most Boroughs and Villages.
Corel used to have a team that worked with manufacturers, I was a part of that input way back in version 4 through version 8. I played no part in it but in the version 8 development Corel partnered close with Adobe, sending 4 developers helping them write code and debug drivers for postscript 3, actually having to demonstrate PS 3 printing on Draw at the San Francisco Seybold Graphics show because Illustrator wouldn't print.
I also worked with a team from version 12 through X5 on what became the new color management engine in X5.
Those collaborations early on produced export filters that worked in the then new assumed color space digital front end work flows of the day for printing, like Trapwise and Imposition.
Later the color management collaboration in X5 produced a still industry standard process for color managed digital front end work flows. I debuted that engine and work flow at the Graphics of the America's show in Miami as part of the X5 release tour.
This resulted in full color model support for transparency all though it took until, version 2019 to resolve the (what I call) the improperly built complex fills issue in PDF export.
I have seen no production industry focus from Corel since then.
At those times I was writing for Printing Impressions, Sign and Graphics and Print and Graphics magazines as well as running my shop Custom Printers. I was also consulting to Heidelberg on what became the Meta Dimensions and then later on the Printnect work flows. Soon after I was consulting to Mimaki on exportation to the Rasterlynk process for spot colors. As part of those processes I worked with Onyx developing RIP drivers for the pigment ink based archive printers and their collaboration with Zund cutters.
The concept early on besides getting paid was opening the door for PC work stations and RIP servers. While I had no intent the end result of these and most others companies development was an extinction level event for MAC RIP servers and a monumental decrease in the MAC based work station.
I made sure there was a discussion for a path for CorelDRAW export to these devices I consulted for and by the time X5 rolled out CorelDRAW export was second to none for universal industry compliance.
This was as much chance as anything as all of these companies except Heidelberg had settled on developing their workflows on Global Graphics based RIP Engines. Both Heidelberg and Global Graphics had made supporting PC systems a priority and 90% of all RIPS today are based on Global Graphics core templates.
Today the reduction in print companies, the demise of many ad agencies, the increase of one person design and manufacture shops, with the consolidation of interior design with architecture has the vast percentage of graphics being PC based.
My top architectural clients have marketing departments that are huge, 1 is as large as the top 10 ad agencies in my area the other as big as the top 5. All architectural, interior design firms have marketing departments in my experiance all I've seen are PC based.
The point being that Corel let all this progress go and allow Adobe capture a great deal of this work.
Yani said:
It is a helpful thread. Thumbs up to you! I hope this will help me alot
Yani said:I think Bobby miss3ed the point completely.
No. I didn't. David said the sign industry is moving in the direction of these hand held routers. That's not true. A device like a Shaper Origin may be great for doing wood-working tasks. But in a commercial sign company that kind of device is not a substitute at all for a real routing table and software to completely control the router bit along the cutting path as well as the plunge depth.