Product

Pandora^® 1.5

Operating system

Macintosh^® & Windows^®

Symptoms

When placing artwork into a CAD file, the artwork does not snap correctly into the CAD, but is rotated either 90 degrees clockwise or 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Cause

Pandora's snap-to-die functionality is quite basic. It does not perform any shape analysis to match the artwork to the die station. When snapping, Pandora reads the rotation specified in the die, applies the rotation to the artwork, and centers the artwork within the die station's rectangular bounds. This function works well when the die station is rotated in the die file, and artwork and the original die station are created with the same head direction. Some shops draw all the die stations first, and then create blocks from them. This results in all the die stations having 0 degrees rotation. To get the rotation in the die file, the operator must draw the initial die station heads up, create a block from the die station, and place and rotate the block.

Another common problem is that since the artwork and die are created by different operators, they are sometimes drawn with different head directions. When the artwork snaps to the die, it will be off by +/-90 or 180 degrees. The artwork should be created with the same head orientation as the die station is drawn.

Solution

The other way to adjust for this misalignment is to place the artwork in the JIV, rotate it to counteract the rotation in the die, and then snap to die. When the “snap to die” is performed, the artwork is rotated additionally by the amount specified by the die.

Here is a correct method that should work for any job:

1. Place the artwork in the JIV.

2. Place the die in the JIV.

3. Rotate the artwork to visually match the rotation of the die station.

4. Select a die station and read the rotation using the Control Palette.

5. If the rotation is 0, you can proceed. If the rotation is anything other an 0, you must subtract that amount from the artwork's rotation. This counteracts the rotation that happens when you snap to die.

6. Select all.

7. Select Object > Snap to die.

Technical contact(s)

Sandy Wong

Submitted by

Sandy Wong

Date submitted

06 Aug 2002