**FREELOADERS**

[jakedog]

I agree with most that is said above. The only thing that makes me shake my head at is when a person gets on and asks for a conversion that should be an absolutely no brainer, usually a black and white simple drawing that would normally take a newbie about 5 or 10 minutes to convert or one that I can do in about 30 seconds..... My issue is why is this being asked when there are so many tutorials on here that show exactly how to do this? It takes longer to post up the question than it does to do the actual conversion.....

This starts to make me feel like an unpaid employee of someone else who is going to make capitolize or profit off of my generosity for something they SHOULD already know how to do.....

I ask in my head...how the heck to you own a plasma table and not know how to do a simple black and white conversion to DXF???? Obviously some of the more detailed or complex files can be challenging but come on..... some people are asking for simple text to be converted and I just shake my head and pass it on by.

I love PlasmaSpider and what it gives to the community and how it helps. For 20 bucks you get thousands of dollars worth of cut-ready (or near cut-ready) files that you can make money from plus tons of knowledge and expertise to help you with if you ever get in a bind or run into a problem. What an awesome place, plus I learn tons from seeing what others are doing with the designs. I am not going anywhere but get rather annoyed/surprised at some of the conversion requests that are made.

I have to laugh at myself for someone who will spend 10K (or much more) for a plasma table and cutter and then balk and cry at a $300 expense for Corel Draw (much cheaper if you get last year's version off of that auctin site). Its like the person who purchases a 500 dollar I-phone and then demands a discount or refuses to pay for that 4.99 app.

Question for ya, You seem to have it together. I currently have cad lite and have been practicing tracing in lite and its tedious. I downloaded inkscape today and played with that and thought I had it then it would freeze up my TM cad program. What paid program do you recommend to go with lite? I have had this table a few months now and don't have a lot of time to speak of other than just playing around cutting some things for gifts and such. No actual sales of any sorts yet. Im not ready to sell junk to someone. I did just post against my wishes in the conversion thread a simple trace. Would like some input when you have a few minutes. Even pm me if you want. I thank you in advance.

[timberfab]

Jakedog,

FOr straight drawing and saving as DXF (not conversions of Jpegs and vectors to DXF) Draftsight is a great program. It is almost an exact clone of Autocad. made by the same company as solid works (Don;t quote me on that. been in the shop since 8am. and it is currently 4:26am)

Try Not running your TMCad and TMdrivers while using inkscape.

[exapprentice]

Hi Jakedog

As above, but take a look at Solid Edge 2D software (free download - I think) little brother of the solid edge solid modelling software
I find it really easy.
Arclight have a video tutorial on how to start using it, the choice is yours, it all comes down to personal choice and preferance
(Hats of to the guys at Arclight they have done some really brilliant videos, helped me a lot-definatly worth a shout out)
hope you find what you want

Regards
exapprentice

[jakedog]

THANKS timerfab and exapprentice. I will look into all those!

[Gamelord]

I use Corel to do 99% of all my drawings and it (so far) seems to worke perfectly with TM cad. One thing that may be giving you headaches is your video card. Drawing programs tend to be pretty resourse extensive when it comes to video cards and computers usually get sent out with the cheapest video card on the market at the time. Nearly all problems with crashes, freezing etc... (when it comes to multiple programs - especially drawing ones) is the video card being just to week to run.

What I would suggest, even with Corel - is to upgrade your video card to something more powerful. Something that has a minimum of 2g ram. You should be able to find one that is under 100 bucks and it usually only takes about 15 minutes to swap it out. Of course the more the better.

If your video card is week, any extensive drawing program you use will lag/crash/freeze and be irritating to use.