Convert to curves or vector art for screen printing

[Shelly]

HELP!  My screen printer cannot open any of my files.  Says they need to be "AI, vector or pdf in curves".  This is a simple three color screen print that I created in spot colors in Designer.  The covert to curves is grayed out.  I down loaded an Image Vectorizer and if do the entire file, it vectors to one big blob.  If I do the individual layers, two of them don't show up and are blank.  

I am sure there is a very simple way of doing this, but I am stumped.  I thought I created it correctly and they were already curves. 

Here's the nugget of info that will make most of you cringe I think....screen printer uses corel draw.  I detest that program and know very little about it, but it should still open my PDF's.

Thank you in advance for your help.

DARK B LIGHT OUTLINE.pdf Dark B light outline Revised.afdesign

[thomaso]

Although I see curves only in your PDF there are some overlapping/spilt parts (in light blue and in white) and some gaps between shapes (with no colour), not sure what in fact might cause issues for the printer. (sorry, I can't open V2).

You could try the attached PDF, it got the various curves of each colour merged (to one for each colour) and gaps fixed.

DARK B LIGHT OUTLINE_2.pdf

[v_kyr]

3 hours ago, Shelly said:

I think....screen printer uses corel draw. 

What screen printer software, is it a Corel Draw add-on, or a standalone app etc.? - The informations you gave so far about that specific software are insufficient, as many things here in that Corel Draw add-on context are called or meant to be "screen printer(s)". Give at least a link or company name for that software, so vounteers here can inspect that software's capabilities and what concrete vector file formats (AI, SVG or PDF...) it is meant to be used with!

[MikeW]

4 hours ago, Shelly said:

HELP!  My screen printer cannot open any of my files.  Says they need to be "AI, vector or pdf in curves". ...

Here's the message they are likely getting when attempting to open your pdf:

This happens because of a setting when exporting a pdf that will be opened in CorelDraw. Uncheck the setting below and it will import just fine in CD:

 

4 hours ago, Shelly said:

...Here's the nugget of info that will make most of you cringe I think....screen printer uses corel draw.  I detest that program and know very little about it, but it should still open my PDF's.

Thank you in advance for your help.

So you know very little about CorelDraw and yet enough to detest it?

49 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

What screen printer software, is it a Corel Draw add-on, or a standalone app etc.? - The informations you gave so far about that specific software are insufficient, as many things here in that Corel Draw add-on context are called or meant to be "screen printer(s)". Give at least a link or company name for that software, so vounteers here can inspect that software's capabilities and what concrete vector file formats (AI, SVG or PDF...) it is meant to be used with!

CorelDraw is very widely used in screen printing, often with add-ons to handle spot colors in bitmaps. But for flat work like this, I just output negatives and the screen film is made direct.

Here's CD's file types it can open...

[v_kyr]

55 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Here's CD's file types it can open...

From that list CD can open a bunch of file formats and also the two main vector formats (PDF + SVG) for an exchange with Affinity software here. - And if an CD add-on for screen printing just reuses CDs common file format capabilities here, so doesn't have any specific own PDF or SVG format restrictions, then I assume that a SVG or PDF export from an Affinity app should usually also be importable by (exchangable with) CD.

[MikeW]

5 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

From that list CD can open a bunch of file formats and also the two main vector formats (PDF + SVG) for an exchange with Affinity software here. - And if an CD add-on for screen printing just reuses CDs common file format capabilities here, so doesn't have any specific own PDF or SVG format restrictions, then I assume that a SVG or PDF export from an Affinity app should usually also be importable by (exchangable with) CD.

Yes, but...

As noted above, that setting found by pressing the More button has to be unchecked for a pdf to open in CD.

The add-ons work within CD and are usually glorified print drivers for the vector stuff. The other main add-ons for bitmap work are used in conjunction with CD for final output, again, through the print process.