Illustrator Alignment for Printing and Plotting

[JoeydeVries]

Hi guys!

So I've been using Illustrator for a while now on my new job, and we use Illustrator to lay-out our products since we design durable post-it notes.

To manufacture these, we have to keep every entity in a separate layer. A layer for cutting, a layer for print and a layer for creases.

We have a lot of problems with alignment of the cards, since they have to be alligned to a magnetic backing which is added onto the print before cutting, Everything has to lay very precisely.

I used the keyboard increment and guides but the magnetic snap is kind of bad, there is no "dimension" to use and overall it is time consuming while I think it could be way more effective.

I tried HotDoor CADtools, but their raster is not modifyable (you can divide the raster by 2 but not insert that the raster has an "increment" of 3mm)

Which is I think essential for this project.

Do you guys, architects, printers, manufacturers have any idea how to optimize this Workflow?

Thank you!

[jdanek]

Sounds like a bindery / post print problem.  Are you using a specific size magnetic sheet?  Wouldn't that match up to the sheet size of the artwork?  How many sheets to a pad?  There will be some waste no matter what you do.  Not sure how the file itself can be improved.

[JoeydeVries]

It's not a post print problem, when I try to align everything on the same line it almost always differs by hand, so the only solution is to use the keyboard increment option which can be time consuming, I hoped that I could find a solution in a smart guides/raster thing that is magnetic (Coreldraw had this in X7, but I use a MacBook Air which does not run parallels very well)

That if I grabbed a handle it would automatically align on a guide/grid.

[throbnz]

Have you tried working in outline mode? "command y"

[Ray Yorkshire]

have you tried Colliderscribe2  by Astute Graphics?

that's good for aligning and easy snapping

has a free trial

https://astutegraphics.com/software/colliderscribe/

.