dongles

[gcannon]

I have 2 dongles, one that came with ver. 7, and one that came with the latest machine we bought and ver. 9. Is a dongle just a dongle, no matter what version I am running, or is the dongle designed specifically for the version that is being used? I ask this because we want to separate our five machines into 2 "pods".

[Rod or Sharon]

Greg,

Ver 9 can open Ver 7 and lower designs, but Ver 7 or lower cannot open or recognize a design that was created in a higher version of Design Shop. You run into these same issues with the graphic programs like Corel or Adobe, etc.

You can separate the machines into 2 pods and if all designs were created in Ver 7 or lower Design Shop, they will open on either pod using the Ver 9 dongle. Having said that, I believe a change in Ver 9 Design Shop allowed saving in a Universal format, basicly EXP, that would allow Ver 7 to open a design created in Ver 9 DS.

An example to futher confuse the issue....the upper level update of Ver 9 is 9.00.099. If I was not updated to this same level in Ver 9, a design created in 9.00.099 would allow me to open it in my level of Ver 9 , but would open in Design Shop as an Expanded format.

Are these pods going to be at separate locations and not in the same room? There would be no benifit to 2 separate pods otherwise because you can network up to 30 machines off of the same ethernet card and one dongle. If you add another ethernet card to the computer (unless you are using a laptop) then you can go with another 30 machines on the same dongle in AOS.

Rod Springer
Amaya Tech & Trainer

[gcannon]

Yes, Rod the machines are in a row- the reason we want to seperate them is so that we can load more than 1 machine at a time & also we can use 2 monitors to see the design is centered and so forth. We are going to give it a try at the end of this week, and I will let you know how it goes. Thank you so much for this input.

[Rod or Sharon]

Greg,

Do you have Flex + ? If so there still isn't any reason to have them set up as separate pods.

If all you have is Flex and not Flex + then separating the machines would give you some more flexibility. The difference between Flex and Flex +.....Flex allows you to network as many machines as the ethernet cards will support, but they will all have to sew the exact same design. Flex + will allow the same , but also allows different designs to be loaded to each individual machine from the one computer to be sewn simultaneously.

Rod Springer
Amaya Tech & Trainer

[gcannon]

We have Flex+, but the issue is SEEING (not shouting- just don't know how to underline in here) the design & keeping it withing hoop limits on the screen. We do a lot of work above pockets and on leather that require us to run the design off center (mostly in the Y-axis), so seeing the dotted line is important to us, so we don't have to try multiple traces before we start the design. I hope this makes sense.

[Rod or Sharon]

Hummmm...you should not have a problem seeing the dotted line on the AOS screen at any time, regardless of what hoop you are using. Flex + does not have any bearing on what is seen on the screen as far as hoop size or hoop limits is concerned.

Two monitors can be networked together w/o separating the machines into two pods if visiblity of the one monitor is an issue, but still Flex + would network all the machines together to allow better access for all the machines to work together...

I am not understanding why the dotted lines would disapear unless the work space on the monitor is too small or the image is too large? What size hoops are we discussing ?

Rod Springer
Amaya Tech & Trainer

[Posylane]

When we got a second machine we paid for another Flex+ license. Most of our jobs are one-of-a-kind so I wanted separate systems and no screw ups.

I don't know that I would have a problem but you have to factor in employees.

[gcannon]

It's not the seeing- it's the distance that we have to walk to see the screen. We store all of our desingns on a server and retrieve them from there, so there's really nothing but OS on the PC running the machines. And the wait for the other person to load and "locate" the design within the hoop. We are trying to maximize productivity. This is not the way that I would do it by any means, but I have to try to do what the boss tells me to do.

[Rod or Sharon]

Aa..ha... now the rest of the picture...the vision is now clear....a separation as a defensive tactic is not such a bad plan...how is it that we spell employees in this business....
im-plode-ee's?

Rod

[gcannon]

You finally get the picture.