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SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

(OP)
Has anyone had any success creating silk screen artwork with SolidWorks and then importing into Adobe Illustrator and have the same text appearance?  

I've created the artwork on a part within SW by extruding the text on the part surface.  Then a drawing was created showing the artwork placement on the part.  The text was hatched to fill it in.  It looks nice and crisp in SW but when it is saved as a dxf and imported into Illustrator the interior of the text is filled in.  For example a "D" has the center portion of the letter blacked-out.  

If the drawing file is exported as a pdf or an Illustrator file a dark outline appears when the artwork is viewed as a pdf or within Illustrator.

I'm not an Illustrator expert by any means so any help or hints would be appreciated as I need to wrap this up for my client.

Thanks!

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

You might  not want to have the hatching.  It may be that you need to have someone handling the Illustrator stuff to handle touch=up on things like that.

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

If I remember correctly, in Illustrator the outline can be adjusted by the 'weight' of the 'stroke'. But it's been a long time since I used Illustrator so the terms could be incorrect.

cheers

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

I use AI CS2.

Save your drawing as a pdf, not dxf. AI will bring the pdf right in and honor all the outlines. If you do use font's in your drawing that are not supported in your AI font library in the sheet format, these will change, but if you have used text to do cut extrudes, then these outlines are vectors, not fonts. Don't use shaded or shaded with edges views, as they are raster, not vector.

Also, whenever you create and AI file for silks, convert any additional text you have used to outlines, as the vendor who recieves your files may not have these fonts.

You can bring the ai file back into solidworks too. make sure when you save it is in like AI10 format, and you have only what you want coming back in turned on. Make sure use compression is unchecked, otherwise SW won't read the file.

rfus

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

Most companies that I have sent files to required .DXF because they always want to manipulate the files to work with their own applications. So, I create a drawing for each color/layer and save each one as a .DXF to send to them.
But, I always had to call out the type and size of font for the artwork and send as a PDF, otherwise they would use their own.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08; CATIA V5
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

(OP)
rfus,

Thanks but when I save the drawing as a pdf the text gets thicker.  This is what I meant by the "outline" in my post.  It happens with both pdf and ai exports.  Is there maybe an option that's not set correctly when I create the pdf or ai file?

Thanks,

Dave   

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

(OP)
CorBlimeyLimey,

Thanks for the tip, I'll look for that in AI.

Dave

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

helbling34,

   Put your outline on a separate layer, and turn that layer off.  There is no need for Abobe illustrator, unless you have a corporate logo.

               JHG

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

you can easily change the line weight in AI.

rfus

RE: SW to Illustrator for Silk Screen Artwork

(OP)
It turns out that the fix was to change the line thickness of the drawing in SolidWorks and when the pdf is created be sure that "use specified printer line weights" is selected under the export options.  

Thanks

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