Extrude outline question

[phil]

Sorry in advance if I am missing something completely obvious.

I have noticed that with the 3d extrude tool an outline is created around the whole object, even when the contents of the extrusion are shown as a clipped bitmap, but I am looking for a way to be able to create just the outline with the purpose of sending a "cut line" to a vinyl plotter.

Ideally, I need to print my finished deign and then use just the outlines to contour cut the design on the plotter. I want to send the design to Corel Draw before production as this has the necessary macro to produce the required crop marks and cutting instructions but, so far, I have not found a way of getting the contours into Corel.

Thanks for any help!

[-=Drifter=-]

Have you checked out the File - Print Options In Xtreme itself?

[steve.ledger]

This method will produce a vector line around an extruded for your cutline.

Hope it helps

PS: Copy the cutline to a new .xar (*only* the line) and save as an .ai for importing into CorelDraw

[phil]

Thank you both for your time.

Sledgers solution will work fine - very well explained - thanks.

This is going to be a great help for print and cut sign graphics.

Thanks again.

Phil

[MikeJE]

Sledger,

I too am a sign maker who digi-prints and contour cut vinyls.

Thanks for the method for putting vector/cut line around exruded shapes but do you know of a way to seperate the exrusion from it's parent and put a vector/cut-line around each seperate element?

Thanks in advance, Mike.

[steve.ledger]

Hi Mike,

An extruded shape is a single object, there are no parts to break or ungroup. You would need to use an extrude as a referrence and redraw the seperate shapes accordingly.

[Egg Bramhill]

There is a convoluted way of doing it and it only works if there's no curves.

Create the shape in XXP. Copy and paste into Xara3D

Create the extrusion to suit.

Export as a vector swf

Import into Flash.

Export as an ai from Flash

Import into XXP

See attached xar created via this long winded (but quick) route.

[MikeJE]

Thanks Sledger and Egg,

I found another way to do it as well...

Being a sign maker I'm primarily using lettering with drop shadow that can be contour cut.

!.) Extrude the shadow from the text, adjust the face orientation to how you want it.

2.) Clone the extruded text

3.) Carefully push back the cloned extrution to zero, without changing the face orientation, just leaving the original text.

4.) Use Sledger's slicing technique to obtain the seperate vectors for both the extrusion and the text.


The de-extruded clone "start" text seems to be fractionally bigger than the original but I used the contour tool to reduce it's size to match.


Sledger,

I've seen you post other sign orientated Xara stuff but wouldn't it be fantastic to use Xara directly with a digital printer and cutter without having to go through other interface software? Maybe a Xara plugin would do the trick?
It would be great to have a section within this forum where Xara used in signmaking could be discussed. Corel think the sign industry is worth it as a market. They are exhibiting at next weeks SignUK exhibition to promote Corel Draw to sign makers. I emailed the Xara help team with my thoughts a while back and they said that others had requested similar stuff. I guess they are pretty busy at the moment though.

Mike.

[MikeJE]

Another quick way is to use the contour tool on the whole extruded shape -set outline distance to zero and then convert to editable shaps, then ungroup.

Mike.

[steve.ledger]

Sledger,

I've seen you post other sign orientated Xara stuff but wouldn't it be fantastic to use Xara directly with a digital printer and cutter without having to go through other interface software? Maybe a Xara plugin would do the trick?

Absolutely. FineCutPro plugs into CorelDraw (or Illustrator).
If FCPro could be made to work with XtremePro, then this would be a huge leap forward for Xara and would open many doors for us Xarians and many sign shop owners

I'd wager that Xara would sell a few more copies of XtremePro too