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I'm having a nightmare trying to figure out the solution to some problems with my illustrator PDF files that are to be imported later to be laser cut in Corel Draw X8 64 (bit) program.

My issues are in the anchor points of my designs. This issue almost always seems to come up with circles, or circular designs. My issues are that most of my circle designs have far too many anchor points, or these nodes that it freaks out Corel Draw's Job Center program, and I'm unable to laser cut these.

To add insult to injury, so many of my designs have duplicate lines layered on top of each other when I go to the pathfinder to 'Divide'. I delete the areas of shapes I don't need, but the ones I use seem to have double lines! Super frustrating. Is it possible to 'merge' any lines that are duplicates, or that are 'stacked' on top of each other? I would assume that these duplicate lines in my designs are also adding to the extra anchors.

I've attached a screenshot of my designs in Illustrator that are later crashing Corel Draw's Job Center program for laser cutting on behalf of too many anchors.

Close up of illustrator file and the overwhelming anchor points. These are unable to be used in Corel Draw X8 (64 bit) for cutting the laser files I need of these

Another example of a different design that is unable to be used for laser cutting in Corel Draw Job Center. I assume there are too many overlapping paths, and or anchor points.

Close up of overwhelming amount of anchor points

Another design file example

I have just tried to clean up my anchor points with "Mass-remove Bezier Curves in Illustrator" but it severly effects my design to be laser cut. See attached photo.

This is after 50% reduction with 'Mass-remove Bezier Curves in Illustrator' You can see how my design is severly altered. Any suggestions on how to retain the integrity of my design, while removing all these extra anchor points?

You can see here highlighted in Black all of these extra anchor points. When I use the 'Delete Anchor Point Tool' and start to delete these anchor points the line is re-adjusted (as it should) and I start to see underneath this line, is often a dashed line -- -- -- --- --- like this, or simply another layer of this line underneath it. See next photo

Look at duplicate line underneath top line. I've deleted the 30+ anchor points on this path to reveal this under layer. How can I separate these two layers without having to manually go thru my whole design?

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  • I'm not sure if your problem is AI or Corel. Does your AI file has all those nodes or they just appear when opening at Corel? Does your AI file has duplicate lines or they just appear when opening at Corel? And the main problem, why do you or somebody need to have a Corel file? There's not another alternative than Corel? A PDF will not be better? Did you try exporting the AI file to SVG, and open it at Corel?
    – user120647
    Jun 29, 2018 at 20:52
  • Thank you Danielilo for your quick reply. I've just now opened up a file in Illustrator and direct selected it. You can see all these anchor points. I agree with you, as I think my issue is directly in Illustrator. When I export these as PDF for Corel Draw it freaks out it's laser cutting system. My issue / question is how I can eliminte, or merge paths that overlap each other *(as I seems to have so many extra paths in my designs) as well as eliminate anchor points without literally going thru each design and removing them with the 'Delete Anchor Point Tool'
    – user123176
    Jun 29, 2018 at 20:58
  • graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/109377/120647
    – user120647
    Jun 29, 2018 at 21:10
  • For the lines, select the top one and pressing shift make a frame to deselect the top line and select the others behind and delete.
    – user120647
    Jun 29, 2018 at 21:11
  • 3
    Possible duplicate of Mass-remove Bezier Curves in Illustrator
    – user120647
    Jun 29, 2018 at 21:16

2 Answers 2

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You cannot get rid of the undesired points inside the Illustrator and keep the same curvature.

You can use a plugin, instead:

VectorScribe from AstuteGraphics

You may try to cut your shapes using Outline instead of Divide.

It will not overlap but will give you open paths you can join later.

See the image below:

enter image description here

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A circle needs at least 4 nodes. You can use Object>Path>Simplify to reduce nodes. Even at maximum fidelity it may mess up your design.

Straight lines only need 2 nodes, one at each end. You can manually remove the in between ones.

Those double lines are caused by expanding or flattening stroked paths. The stroke becomes it's own path. The only way I know to avoid this is to not expand the stroke in the first place.

If you begin your art using only pen tool, line tool and shape builders, with one color 1 point stroke with smart guides and "snap to" selected you can control all nodes precisely and expanding is not necessary.

Tip: select individual nodes with the white arrow selection tool to move or delete them.

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