I hear people talk about Corel... I purchase Corel 5 at the same time as CASmate........just never felt comfortable with Corel. Corel was a fraction of the cost though.......I suppose that’s why the supplier steered me towards CASmate.......always felt like he hosed me anyway. Never-the-less I'm fairly content with CASmate.

I've invested 4 years of my time with it....so its pretty tough to switch now,considering the time and effort.

Would really like to hear anyone’s comments on CASmate or any other programs for that matter.

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I got a copy of Inspire almost 3 years ago & the learning curve kept me from making the switch. I had just come to depend on sitting down, and getting things done the speed I was acustomed to. Maybe I will learn it someday, but with it being phased out, I may not. If I can I might trade it with some cash for a copy of Flexi-sign for Mac, so I can plot from both platforms.

Does your copy of casmate crash when you copy & paste? or do an auto clean-up on too many points at one time? Or drag your Paint fill pallette around? When I have Illustrator & photoshop & quickbooks open at the same time I will often be working in another program & the crash dialog box comes up in front to tell me casMate crashed. When I leave for lunch or some errands, & sit down at the computer an hour or two later, as soon as I click in CasMate, it crashes.

To make matters worse, it is an 8 bit program, so I have to close out all programs. & restart the computer to get it running again. This takes way longer then I want to deal with, especially when it happens while designing in a meeting with a client. Someone told me that wouldn't happen if I got Windows 2000 or ME or whatever the new thing is. Is that true? Anyone know? Will CasMate even work on those OS.

I used to lose work all the time, but now I can anticipate what may cause a crash, so I only lose time now. This confession will surely bring out the corel fans in full force. At least I can say that CasMate was paid for before I bought this business, but after 5 years of crashes everyday, I guess I paid a pretty high price as well.

I better stop now I'm making myself sick when I realize what I've put up with. So.. Hows your copy run? What's it running on?

[ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: Doug Allan ]

When operating platforms were going to 16 bit it became clear that a new program was needed so the company came out with Inspire. I beta tested Inspire and never liked that program.

Then when the merger came with the Flexi folks, they kept Flexi and added some Inspire stuff and I got that because it was billed as the future and could still read a dozen years of my Casmate files.

I've messed with Flexi some, but keep finding dissappointment when I find so many things Casmate did so simply that Flexi won't even do.

Perhaps when Mark Rugan does a Flexi seminar in this part of the country I'll attend and see if he can sort some of this out for me.

I use Casmate every day. I also have Inspire, Flexisign, and Coreldraw 8. I, too, bought into the hype that Flexi was the next greatest only to come to find that that they were full of crap.

I have also come to loathe the crashes that occur at times with Casmate. I can also anticipate what makes it crash so I have developed so tricks to minimize them.

Scanvec really dropped the ball when it dropped casmate in favor of Inspire. they had a solid program that absolutely kicked the bejeepers out of any other sign program.

The ediiting tools are still, by far, the easiest to use. It's scanning capabilities are still superior to mst programs available. This is probably due to Scanvec's deep roots in scanning software.

From what I have heard over the course of time, Scanvec developed Inspire because there was a need to have a 32 bit program and Casmate was only a 16 program. The Isreali government pumped a significant amount of money into Scanvec to develop Inspire.

When Scanvec merged with Amiable Technologies, it so incensed the Isreali government that Scanvec was now going to be based in the U.S.A. instead of Isreali, that they pulled the financial backing they had put into Scanvec to develop Inspire and claimed ownership over the program.

This is the reason that Flexisign can not import Inspire files but can import Casmate files. That is why Inspire is not available for sale in the U.S. but still is in Europe. Go figure...

I heard this from several sources including someone who used to work for Scanvec before being let go during the big merger period.

I use my Inspire to run our Encad printer. The RIP in flexisign is a bit better and faster but it is a bit more complicated to use than the Inspire. I really can not tell the difference on prints between the two of them so I go with what is faster and easier for me to use.

I was very disappointed with the Flexisign upgrade. The price was right as far as that goes, but I find myself stumbling around the program trying to decypher what stuff is as in relation to what it was in Casmate or even Inspire.

Inspire has become easier to use over the course of time. I still like to design and layout in Casmate and then open in Inspire if i need to print. I also prefer to do all my cutting from Casmate although cutting in Inspire is very similar.

We run Win98 on one computer and Win95. I did have ME here at home but grew to depise it and switched back to Win98. Progress isn't always better.

Thanks for letting me vent. I feel better... LOL!

I've been running CASmate Pro for 4 years now. Thought it seemed like it took FOREVER to get the program setup correctly, it runs just fine now. I haven't had the crashes that some of you are having (cut and paste), however....do you guys ever have a problem putting an outline around a word or group of words and the outline DOES NOT TAKE on a few of the characters??? %$^&*()@! Like the program has completely ignored some characters??!! I still grieve with this problem..

Once you learn the program, Flexi outshines Inspire in at least these areas:

1)Text editing & manipulation--no comparison!

2)Vectorizing--once you learn it.

3)The ability to quickly change an underlying object (like text) that has an outline, a shadow, a distortion--without backing off and starting over - a real time saver.

4)An awesome RIP utilizing Adobe Postscript 3.0

5)Node editing--I thought Inspire was good, Flexi is much better.

6)Great alignment tools and shortcuts that make it real quick. No more dragging a guideline to center.

7)Design Central--A floating window that changes as your design needs change-always keeping what you need in front of you (sometimes it does get in the way!)

I could go on, but it really boils down to familiarity for most people. We are creatures of habit, so learning and implementing a new program usually meets with resistance.

I have heard that Casmate will not work on any OS newer that Win 98.

Mark Rugen does have a good class on Flexi, and he has some good workbooks / manuals that you can check out on his website:

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