Finishing Tools
Before Flexi Complete, the finishing tools were only available through the Job Properties in Production Manager. Now you can apply the Finishing Tools to your job while you are in the design portion of the software. The effects available to add are: Grommets, Fold, and Bleed.
These tools can be found by opening your “effects” menu and selecting “Finishing Tools.”
All of these tools will always be applied to a rectangular area. If you are working with vectors that are not rectangular, a box will be formed with the furthest up, down, left, and right points of your graphic and be applied as though that is the border.
Grommets
The Grommets finishing tool will add grommet marks to the design, so that you know where to place the Grommets on your finished banner. Once you have selected the grommet effect from the Finishing Tools, Design Central will give you options to set the style, shape, and size of the grommet marks.
You can select “Advanced” in Design Central to control the spacing and placement of your marks. Marks can be set to a certain distance apart by selecting the “by distance” option. The “By Number” option will evenly space the number of grommets you need along the edge.
Once the settings are where you want them, you only need to select the green checkmark in Design Central to apply the marks to your design. The marks shown before selecting the green check are only a preview and will not stay in the design without selecting the green checkmark. You will be able to come back and make adjustments to your grommet marks if you need to, by selecting the object, then selecting the tab with the finishing tool symbol.
Fold
The Fold tool allows you to designate an area that can be folded over to the back. This is frequently used in conjunction with the grommets tool to help reinforce them. Once you have selected the Fold effect, Design Central will let you set the fold area size and add a frame or stitch line.
Just as with the Grommets effect, this does not actually apply the change to the graphic until you have clicked the green check in Design Central, and is only a preview until then. These settings can be changed after being applied by going to the tab in Design Central with the finishing tools symbol.
Bleed
Bleed allows you to add an edge to your graphic so make sure there are no white borders once the graphic has been cut, among other things. Flexi offers 3 kinds of Bleed: Repeat, Mirror, and Color that can be found in the dropdown at the bottom of Design Central. As with the other Finishing Effects, until you select the green checkmark it will only show a preview. You need to select the checkmark to finalize adding the bleed to your design.
Repeat: Stretches and repeats the job as the bleed.
Mirror: Mirrors the job as the bleed.
Color: Adds a solid colored border as the bleed.
Linking Border Size Value
For both the Fold and Bleed effects, a border is created around the object. There is a way to link all of the values together so that the size of the border panels are all the same size or turn it off to allow you to set each size individually. When the “Linked” icon has no gap between the links, then all values are linked together and will remain identical. If there is a small gap between the links, then they are able to be changed independently. If the values are unlinked, you can also select the icon and it will change all values to match the most recently changed one.
Linked:
Unlinked: