Origami 3.1 beta
17 Feb 2021
This is the first beta version of Origami 3.1 with some nice new features. Read on for more details…
Folding editor
Origami got a dieline viewer where you can adjust folding angles without sending the dieline to Illustrator or any other vector editor:
More, you can name a crease line there:
And then easily modify the folding angles in 3D view:
Such named crease lines can be sent to Illustrator and loaded back without losing any information. Actually, Origami simply adds crease line names after the angle values, so a 90 degrees crease line named “Lid” will be converted to an Illustrator path named “90 Lid” — it is that simple.
More, you can name multiple crease lines with the same name and control all of them with a single numeric field. That’s convenient for symmetric flaps and elements like that.
Preflight checker
Starting from this version Origami performs much more checks of the dielines you provide. This includes misaligned and overlapping elements — the most common source of dieline folding problems in the past.
More, Origami doesn’t stop at the first issue it discovers and checks everything, so you may end up with a list of errors that you can click and get them highlighted in the dieline viewer:
The preflight checker is quite strict and you may get warnings for the dielines you considered correct. Although Origami tries its best to tolerate some of the problems and fold the shape anyway, it is highly recommended to look through the errors and fix them.
Artwork processing
This update comes with faster Illustrator artwork processing. Some of our test projects are now loaded up to 10 times faster! Of course it depends on the project itself, but you should feel the difference.
Also Origami does all the artwork processing in background, so you can keep using the software while waiting for the artwork to update.
Folding engine
This version of Origami comes with updated folding engine that may produce slightly different results, compared to the previous version. The shapes of course will look the same, but they might be rotated differently.
Make sure you use markers to define bottom and front (or top and back) parts of the shape in order to avoid any issues. Defining two points: top or bottom and front or back is enough to properly fix the folded shape and prevent any accidental rotation.
Other changes
Here are some other fixes and improvements of this update:
- “back” marker has been added, so you can now define bottom, top, front and back elements of the dieline;
- large canvas support added for Illustrator 2021;
- backup copies of the current project are now created in background;
- mouse zoom has been improved for large scenes;
- SVG processing has been improved for precision and compatibility;
- default line thickness for dielines sent to Illustrator is now configurable;
- folded shape dimensions units fixed;
- the Mac version of Origami needs at least macOS 10.13 to run.
Beta version warning
Note that this is a beta version and although it is considered stable enough here, make sure you have backup copies of your projects. You can always roll back to the older version by downloading it from our website.
Your feedback is very welcome.
Cheers!