advise urgently required

[adwb]

We have bought a cutter/ plotter and the files it uses are svg files.

All the demo files and help files and graphic techniques that are used to create shapes and patterns to cut out seem to be done in Inkscape.

The machine mfg's forum users only seem to use Inkscape and all the tutorials are based on Inkscape

I have been trying to use inkscape because it is but it keeps crashing after a couple of days on a laptop running Windows 7.

I have been a long time user of Xara but not for graphics, more for the photography side , will the latest version import and create svg files and is there any thing that it cannot do that inkscape can?

Can Xara look at a created vector drawing and Analise then add dimensions?

can it be used to brake paths and unlink nodes? etc etc

regards
Alistair

[handrawn]

xara designer x wil import svg files from inkscape

so far in my experience multi-layer inkscape svg files will be imported into xara as one layer, and hidden layers will be lost

shapes and bimaps should import ok - effects and transparencies may not

breaking shapes and unlinking nodes is certainly possible - not sure what you mean by 'add dimensions'

[Albacore]

To answer your last 2 questions:- No it can't add dimensions to a drawing. As Steve states it will easily edit paths.
I don't know of any plotters that actually uses svg files as their instruction file it is usually ansci or HPGL.

[mwenz]

...so far in my experience multi-layer inkscape svg files will be imported into xara as one layer, and hidden layers will be lost...

That is because layers in InkScape are not layers as in other applications. They are really a type of Z-ordering that is peculiar to InkScape. IIRC, the SVG spec does not include layers as we know them. That could have changed over the incremental changes to the spec, though.

@Alistair,

Can you let us know what brand of cutter you purchased? Looking at their help files and or examples would give a better idea of what you would be facing.

Take care, Mike