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We are getting prepared to move into our new shop and I am trying to anticipate any problems we may have.
At this time we use Corel for design, ColorRip from Roland for ripping and printing on the VCamm, and CasMate for stand alone vinyl cutting and CNC routing.
We have 3 computer stations all hooked together with file sharing. We have one computer station with CasMate connected to the plotter and router. Once we get to the new location the router will be in the shop along with the CasMate computer station. The plotter and printer will be in a layout room, and the other two design stations will be in design offices. The building is set up with network cables in all offices.
OK - now to my questions.
Since I am going to have the router and computer in the shop I loose Casmate for running the plotter. I would like to know if I can have the two remaining computers in the offices share a printer (plotter) and cut from Corel 12?
I'm sorry if I described my situation bad and made you read this 3 times.
-------------------- Jerry VanHorn, Pres. Pure Sports Designs, LLC Pro Sign Design / United Wholesale Signs www.prosigndesign.comwww.unitedwholesalesigns.com West Liberty, OH 937-465-0595 866-942-3990 Since 1990 Posts: 925 | From: West :Liberty, OH | Registered: May 2004
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for the price of anbother copy of Corel,. I'd think having a stand-alone plotter workstation would recover the cost of Corel just in time saved trouble-shooting the more complex sharing situation... but that is based on me not being a network guru. Still, if you have employees, I would thinkj over time, the effeciency of the stand-alone solution would make it the better choice even if setting up sharing was no problem, because having 2 people able to open 2 copies of Corel from 2 places will be handy now & then.
As far as understanding your post, I'll admit I'm not sure exactly what you meant by "two computers... share a printer (plotter) and cut from Corel 12" ...Maybe you already have Corel on both, but instead of one outputting cuts & the other outputting prints... maybe you want to output to either device from each computer?
If that was you question, I wouldn't do it. I have a server & all my graphic files are stored on there. Any workstation can pull up any file, so since you usually have some media loading or button pushing required to oputput a job... wherever I design a job, or complete whatever print-ready, or cut-ready set-up work... it is saved to the server. When ready to print or cut, I am content to send the job from a dedicated workstation by accessing the file over the network.
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I agree with Doug about getting a server. We did it about a year ago and run a versacam and plotter from any of 3 workstations. The biggest benefit for us though is having all of our files on one machine. We have a tape mirror drive in it to back up everything, and an additional tape back-up that backs up each night.
-------------------- Tom & Sharon Giampia Creative Image Design Port Chester, NY Posts: 285 | From: Port Chester | Registered: Mar 2001
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Jerry, For running your plotter remotly yes if your cutting program supports it. We use Signlab and it comes with a remote Spooler so what we do is I have 2 Summas connected to two differnet computers so Say I want to cut on the D60 I send it to my wifes computer to a spool file and the Spooler runs Automaticaly in the background and it will start cutting and Vice versa for the T610. As for the Vcamm As far I as I can see No it cannot be ran Remotly only on the conected computer. I have read somewhere that it will run as a normal printer through a Network but I havent researced that part yet as I want to see whats being printed anyway...
PS Give me a call. I wanted to talk to you anyway about some other things also. All I got was your message machine.
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