Why can’t I put neon tubes in an imported design?
There are three possibilities: (1) You are trying to put neon tubes in a group, (2) the loop directions are not correct, or (3) the design is scaled too small for the tube to fit.
Neon tubes can be created in a line of text that has been created in the Wizard or in any object identified as a “Graphic”. If the selected object is a Group, the neon features are disabled. To allow the objects in a Group to be used to create neon tubes, you must use Ungroup to separate them into individual Graphics or you can use Combine to make them into a single Graphic. Do not use Break into Loops because it will separate any inner loops (for letters like B, O, P, etc.) from their outer loops preventing the program from positioning the tube centerlines correctly.
To understand the following, the Show Loop Dir(ection) function in the View menu must be checked. The directions of the loops (clockwise or counterclockwise) and the sequence in which the loops are drawn must conform to the following rules for the neon and certain other features in Neon Wizard to work correctly. For all text characters and graphics, all the outer loops must be clockwise (drawn in blue), all the inner loops must be counterclockwise (drawn in red) and all inner loops must be drawn before the outer loops. With the Show Loop Dir checked, any loops drawn in black are unclosed loops (the exact positions of the start and end points are not identical) and must be closed using the Vector Editing or Loop Editing tools in Neon Wizard. The direction and the sequence in which all loops are drawn for any Graphic or line of text can be made to conform to these rules by selecting the Graphic or line of text and clicking on Reorder Loops in the Edit menu.
The Auto Tube Layout feature will not function correctly if there is not enough room inside the letters for the neon tubes to fit. Whenever you use this feature, you must scale the design to full size. For example, if a design calls for 14 inch tall characters but you have the letters scaled to a height of 2 inches, the Auto Tube Layout feature will not draw the neon tubes in because there is not enough space.
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How important is the quality of imported or vectorized data for neon designs?
Although it is not as critical as the object type and loop direction issues, the general quality of an imported or vectorized image can degrade the quality and throughput of the resulting neon tube design. By low quality we mean loops that are not closed, curves that are not smooth, redundant vectors that should be removed, lines that should be perfectly vertical or horizontal that aren’t, etc.
If the image is clean and sharp with a minimum number of vectors and the curves are all arcs or Bezier curves, the throughput and quality of the results should be consistently good. If, on the other hand, the curves have been broken down into chords (short straight lines that approximate the curves) or if the shape is not smooth, it may take more time to create the neon tubes, more editing may be required and it could take longer to plot the tube patterns because the plotter must process more data. Scanning low quality artwork, using a scanning resolution that is too high or too low, or using an Image Style in Neon Wizard’s Vectorizing function that is intended for smaller, more detailed artwork can result in rough data that has too many vectors. The lower the resolution you use for scanning, the fewer vectors will be in the vectorized image, so use a low resolution but not so low that important details are lost. For the vast majority of artwork, the “Medium” Image Style when vectorizing in Neon Wizard will give the best results
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