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Drawing the Design:
Glass Eye gives you plenty of alignment tools that make it easy to
draw lines that are perfectly horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, and
arranged exactly the way you want them.
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Glass Selections:
After you've created your pattern, you can then fill in the pieces
with the realistic effects of glass images from the glass library
containing over 2200 annotated images from nine major glass
manufacturers. This program has the most comprehensive
library of glass images in the world! |
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This unique glass
browser allows you to choose a color,
then shows you the samples that most closely match it.
You can also search by manufacturer, part number, category, or
keywords. |
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Piece Labeling:
I will design a pattern, add the glass, and with a simple click,
the software applies piece numbers or color codes to the design. |
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Line appearance:
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Lines can be viewed in four different ways: face width, heart thickness, face and heart, and hairline. The images at the right show the line appearance for each of these options. Sometimes you want lines of any color to appear in black, so there's an option for that too. |
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Once I've set the face
width and heart thickness, I will open the "View Properties"
window and select
"Face and Heart": |
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-The black line represents the edge of the glass.
-The inside gray line shows where the foil or lead will cover the
glass piece.
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Preparing Estimate:
The program goes one step further. Click the
properties icon and you get an amazing tool that helps you with
everything you need to price the project . . . |
Price the project based upon
specifications of your square footage charges
and price per piece options. You can even specify your profit
margin into the estimate.
. . . and fulfill the glass order. . .
This window shows two things:
On the left, when you are beginning a project, you can search for an
existing pattern using the programs filters.
Secondly, the right area of this example shows the pop-up notepad, showing
the project dimensions,
specific glass used and its square footage (an excellent "shopping
list" for your glass), and project pricing summary.
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Printing & Assembly of Pattern:
Whether you have a personal inkjet printer or a
wide-format plotter, Glass Eye 2000 will produce beautiful color images
at the size you choose. As long as you have a Windows driver for your
printer, Glass Eye 2000 can print to it.
Professional and Professional Plus Editions allow
you to print your designs using a scale factor or print selected design
elements. Printing selected design elements, of which I do a great
deal, is a terrific time saving feature.
When it's time to print your patterns, you have a variety of options: with or without color, single sheet or actual size, etc.
If the actual size of your design is too big to fit on a single sheet,
Glass Eye 2000 will automatically "tile" the image to several
sheets that you can then assemble into a full-scale design.
I highly recommend setting up the printing, as shown in this
illustration, to "show title and artist," "show page
numbers," and "show page borders." |
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I use my regular printer, printing out
8 x 10 size sheets, and then tile them together, taping as I go.
The "page numbers" and "border" selections are
absolutely necessary, especially for large panel pattern assembly, as
aides to precisely line up the pages,
border to border, when tiling.
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panel measures 20" x 50" and printed out 24
pattern pages for assembly.
Each printed page was numbered
and bordered by selecting the "show page numbers"
and "show page borders" options in the programs
"page setup" option under the "File" menu. |
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The result is a
perfectly aligned pattern for 1/4" leaded panel with
1/2" zinc border. |
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