A vinyl cutter is mostly used for signs. They cut out letters of almost any size onto adhesive vinyl which is then glued to a surface to make a sign. Vinyl is weather and fade resistant making it ideal for outdoors.
>Most I have heard of use proprietary software to output their own format
>vector graphics. I don't know of any that support postscript illustration
>software. Does anyone else?
Most of the cutting plotters comprehend HPGL, which is spoken by just about every CAD program on earth but not so much for anything else. However, it is a widely understood standard. I am not aware of a straight Windows or Macintosh printer driver that will communicate with a plotter.
Sign making software per se is very proprietary and very pricey, ranging from $1000 at the low end to $3995, and that's just the Windows and Mac market, the Unix systems start at over ten grand for the software.
However, there is a fair amount of "bridge software" on the market. There are several packages for Corel, and several of the sign packages are available as "Jr" packages for under a grand that just handle the plotter. The one I use most often is called SignPost, a Macintosh program that reads Illustrator 3 files and controls the plotter.
Since there are no fills or strokes of any kind in HPGL, you have to do art specifically for plotting. None of the bridge software I've seen will make the conversions for you.
Van
(G. Armour Van Horn)
vanhorn@whidbey.net
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