questions form a novice

[Nicole Noel]

Hello,

I have just unpacked my brand new Black Cat cutter, downloaded the software and pureed over the manual. I am hoping that someone can help me with a few questions:

1) Am I correct when I say that Inkscape is for creating your work and SignCut is used to communicate the design to the Black Cat?

2) Can I use Adobe Photoshop instead of Inkscape? If so, what type of docs can SignCut read?

3) I have downloaded Inkscape 0.47 but I get a massage that says "You can't open the application Inscape because PowerPC applications are no longer supported." I am working on a MacBook Pro running Lion.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Tyler]

1) yup - good job!
2) no - adobe photoshop is a raster/pixel photo editor. You need a vector image editor, like adobe illustrator.
3) not sure, I don't have a Mac. Sorry! Though if anyone wants, Christmas and my birthday are coming up! Lol

Did you make sure you downloaded the inkscape version for the Mac?

[Angel135612]

3) not sure, I don't have a Mac. Sorry! Though if anyone wants, Christmas and my birthday are coming up! Lol

LOL Tyler.... are you hinting at what you want for your Birthday and Christmas??

[kate3]

I am using Inkscape 0.47 on my Mac. Did you download the driver?

[Nicole Noel]

Thank you for your quick response.

I have installed the plug in. X11 is loaded I'm my utilities.

The manual specifically says to only download Inkscape version .47 (not .48). I have a suspicion that .48 is what is supposed to run with Lion. Does anyone out there know why Inkscape .47 is OK but not .48?

[Nicole Noel]

Thank you for your help everyone. I reinstalled Inkscape and it now works.

[Tyler]

Great - glad to hear!

Inkscape .48 had some significant changes from .47. SignCut has not updated its plugins yet. Here is what they said

We do not have plugins released for .48 as Inkscape has changed the way they work. We will not release plugins for .48 until they have done a couple of updates on .48 as we can not devote development time to early versions as they often completely change the way things work several times after a new release.

You may fine a compatible version of Inkscape on our website at http://www.signcutpro.com under the download tab.

[Suzan]

Tyler here is a question. Can you work in .48 and save as a .47 so you can use some of the features?

[Thyme]

Yes you can Suzan

[Nicole Noel]

I have created a doc in Inkscape and would like to export to SignCut however the Extensions pulldown does not have an Export tab (as it does in the BC manual). I tried saving the doc and then opening it in SignCut but when I opened the doc it have only the text but not the graphic.

[Gigi]

I hope this is the right answer - but as I recall - sometimes when you reinstall Inkscape you need to reinstall SignCut over itself and then the plug-in will be there. You should see the export option then. Hope that helps!

I am assuming that if you imported a graphic you did a trace to turn it into an svg (vector file). But first things first - you need to get the export working!

[Nicole Noel]

Fantastic on both counts. Thank you! This Black Cat community is better than any corporate tech support.

[Gigi]

Nicole -

Are you trying to do a print and cut? Have you watched Penny's video? That is super helpful. Assuming you have calibrated your machine first. Without that nothing will work. I have written directions too - posted somewhere - if you need them! It's definitely a bit of a process, but if you follow the steps it works beautifully. Holler if you get stuck!

Once you master it, you will be hooked!