WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Friday, February 3, 2012

EnRoute 5 - MOST exciting feature so far.

Yesterday I posted about my first impressions of version 5 of EnRoute. I had discovered the warp/distort feature but didn't have much time to play as of yet. But you can bet my mind was racing with all the new possibilities and added power this gave me to design.

In creating the last job we did I had spent the most time creating the waving British flag at the top. Getting everything tweaked perfectly took me quite a while. Each section had to be done separately. 

With the new distort feature in EnRoute 5 this promised to be a whole lot easier. So I opened a flag vector I already had and gave it a whirl.  The flag vector I had was a trace from a bitmap. Not especially accurate but it would do.


I selected the vector I wanted to trace and then clicked on the distort menu. It is found under transform. EnRoute instantly overlays a grid on my vector.


Then I go over the drawing grabbing the various nodes and pulling them to the shape I desired.


WHen I was happy I hit enter and PRESTO!  What had taken me a great deal of time only the day before yesterday was now possible in seconds. How cool is that!


I am really liking version 5 of EnRoute already! Thanks to the folks who worked so hard and long to make it possible!  

I talked with EJ, EnRoute Product Director, yesterday and he says it is on the way very soon!

-dan