MAC - HPGL for front panels (FPE and Schaeffer...)

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Piotr

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 23, 2005
Messages
143
Location
Chambery, France
Hi to all,

while building Bruno2000's SSL9K 51X preamps, I've used his template to order a faceplate from Schaeffer in Germany. The faceplate haven't showed up yet but in the meantime I've been playing with their Front Panel Designer software on Mac to see how it work and I'm curious about HPGL (.plt) files.

What software do you use on MAC and/or PC to create the vector based graphics ? What advices do you have since I'd like to design better front panels in the upcomming months...

All infos welcome !!! Piotr
 
I use Corel draw for exporting to HPGL, it's also possible to use illustrator to do so also, here is a tutorial on how to do on Corel, i have one of the latest Corel, and works same same..
http://www.nrgrecording.de/html/hpgl_diy.html

A tip that i had from Franck @NRG: if you want the paint to be evenly filled inside a logo, you need to use Milling cutter tool, so the cavities are flat, pretty logical, because if you use engraving tool then you'll see the lines in the logo, and the result will be bad.
For making sure it will be good, you have to zoom in the Logo when imported in fpd program and if you see no empty lines but all area covered, then you'll be good to go.
Some more infos to have a better picture:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontpanelexpress.com%2Ffileadmin%2Fpdf%2Ftips_tricks%2FHPGL.pdf

When your logo is done, when you'll import in fpd, you'll have the choice to choose the drilling or milling tools, you'll have a direct preview of the reslut in a small window, of course a bigger milling tool will make the logo fatter and so take the details away....

Hope this helps?
 
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