DocPixel, Learning By Mistake is a perfectly good way to learn -- and never ever to forget the lessons learned!

@simpson246 - I guess I'm a bit curious for a couple of reasons:

1) why you specifically came here to this forum, to ask for help about Illustrator. Besides the fact that Cutstudio also has an integrated tracing feature, your answer could have easily been found on say YouTube or through a Google search. Literally 1000's of tutorials on the web how to use the pen tool, manually or automatically tweak settings for Auto Trace and then do manual clean up.

2) the other point was that I was shocked (which is common the more often I visit these forums I must say), that while you have a vinyl cutter, you have no knowledge of how the designs or documents are created that you send to it. This has (as far as I know) always been done in one kind of vector software or another for almost a couple of decades now. Even the cutter software has a pen tool(s) to create the cut-line. So what made you decide to use a strange new program like Illustrator to do the job?

While I thoroughly enjoy teaching people new tricks or help troubleshooting problems, I do have a rather nasty pet peeve. That is when it appears that someone is too lazy to spend the time to search for an answer, or take the time to learn from the copious amount of information and tutorials freely available on the web, and posts a question instead.

I've been in this business now for 30+ years, and I can't tell you how many 1000's of hours I have given to learning my trade, whether software, art, or technology. I've done this on my time and my dollar for the vast majority of it. I never expected a "free simple ride", which means I also didn't ask questions until all other sources were exhausted.

Lastly, whether I should and do ignore it most days, the fact that so many people think that they can just purchase a couple of thousand dollars worth of equipment and software and now they are a "professional" business by just hitting the "print button".... irks me.

Over the years I've witnessed countless small businesses that invested literally 10s of thousands of dollars over the years, thus supporting the developers and moving the industry forward, with training and equipment... only to see them be undercut and sometimes wiped out be these "new kids on the block". The very same kids that come here now and ask "newbie" questions to do the job for 1/3 price. It is what it is and I can't change that and don't even attempt to, but it surely does get to me some days.

Yes, I realize I should be more disciplined and let it slide without comment then... but, ya know... I'm human and just as impulsive as the next guy/girl some times that posts the question rathing than waiting a minute or 2.

@Jongware - I agree fully with "Learning By Mistake is a perfectly good way to learn".

It's learning by "having some one else do all the work", or "learning on the free individually tailored training from others" that I disagree with. Google, YouTube, AdobeTV, Smashing Magazine, etc. etc. also offer "free", you just might have to apply yourself. Also there is fantastic and affordable online training from Lynda.com to boot.

Learning by mistake and experimentation is the only way some of us Old Dogs were able to learn at all. Now get off my lawn!