Good easy to use paint/draw program for panels

[FS4]

What's a good one to draw panel graphics and then print them?

[Guest Glenn Weston]

G'day Dave, Well I have played with corel draw a bit & find it perfect for panel layouts, here is one I threw together one night just fiddling around.The lettering looks a bit out of wack on screen but it prints out fine.Any good graphics program should do the trick, the main thing probably is that it should be able to do vector graphics (I think thats what they call it).Once you have the panel layout you should then be able to export it to a .JPG file, if you want to get a negative made then some printers can read directly from a vector grphics file like corel draw .CDR thereby not losing any resolution & you will have a nice crisp negative of your design.Cheers Glenn

[Guest MikePowell]

I've had good luck with TurboCAD. I picked up an older version for $20 at OfficeMax (? might have been Staples). Occasionally IMSI has a free download of a 2D version. There are several other CAD programs listed on http://www.mikesflightdeck.com/links_1.htm . Scroll down to the CAD software section.Mikewww.mikesflightdeck.com

[FS4]

Thanks for the quick reply. Thats exactly what I would like to do. What do you mean by a negative? How can I make a panel graphic in which the letters will be clear with a black background so that I can backlight it? Also, can you suggest a good method to make suck a panel? Thanks.

[Guest Glenn Weston]

Dave, the attachment I put in my post is actaully a neagative, all you have to do in your software say for example corel draw is create a positive, i.e. black writing with white background once your drawing is complete you can select an option in the software to invert the image to a negative & print it on a postscript printer onto clear overhead film however I have found the black from a laser printer is not black enough to block all the light but is good enough for testing purposes.The best thing to do is take your artwork as a positive to a printers shop that can read your files directly in the format that you have created, in my case a .CDR file & ask them to create a negative for you, the negative will be of very high resolution & the black areas will be totally black blocking all light.The way I am attempting to create a backlit panel is to put the negative between clear plexi & translucent plexi, using a CCF lamp to light up the translucent plexi, then all the text will be lit nicely when viewing the panel from the clear plexi side.I will try & do a little demo & take a picture to show the effect.Regards Glenn.

[tigert]

OpenOffice also has a pretty decent graphics tool included, the OODraw.www.openoffice.orgTuomas

[Guest Glenn Weston]

Dave here is what I am working on,1 x old CD-Rom case1 x translucent plexi1 x negative ( just off a laser printer at this stage)1 x clear plexi1 x CCF lampHere you can see how it goes together,firstshot is non backlit, then in peices then backlit, very hard to take a good photo in the dark without a tripod sorry but you should get the idea.Glenn.

[Guest Glenn Weston]

the first two pics lost their aspect ratio but you can see whats going on, I had to resize the pics a bit cause they were too big.Cheers Glenn.

[FS4]

>I've had good luck with TurboCAD. I picked up an older>version for $20 at OfficeMax (? might have been Staples).>Occasionally IMSI has a free download of a 2D version. >>There are several other CAD programs listed on>http://www.mikesflightdeck.com/links_1.htm . Scroll down to>the CAD software section.>>Mike>www.mikesflightdeck.comMike,Thanks for the help. Can turbocad convert a drawing to white on a black back ground and if so, how do I do it?

[Guest MikePowell]

Hi Dave,Yes, you can use TurboCAD to create white line drawings on a black background.I've always created the white line drawing in black initially, then changed the line color to white. Then I create a filled black background object, like a rectangle or circle, over it. I select the background object and using the format command on the tool bar, move it to the back. This basically tells TurboCAD to draw everything else on top of the black object.I'm sure there are more elegant ways to do this, but it works and I've been too busy (or lazy) to find them.Mikewww.mikesflightdeck.com