Professional Engraving Systems

How to Use the Copy Input Feature - by Jimmy DuBose

The Xenetech Graphic Workstation is very powerful production software. As an end user, you need to harness this productivity to improve the profitability of your business. Copy Input will increase your productivity by quickly entering text into your job template. This feature takes basic text files and enters it into a single plate, or uses the text to create multiple and batch plate layouts. In this article, we will show you how easy it is to use Copy Input.

The best text format for Copy Input is ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) text. This format is the native format of Windows™ Notepad. The extension of the file will be *.TXT. The text file should not use Word Wrap, and there should be a hard return at the end of each line. The line breaks for the job should already be set in the text file. Text can be pasted from Excel, MS Word, or an e-mail message, but the formatting in these programs will not be transferred with the text.

A template must be created before doing a copy input. In the sample shown below, we have a simple plaque with two lines of variable text.
You must select only the lines that will take the variable ASCII text.

Go to the Misc menu and select Copy Input… Next, you will select the *.TXT file.

Since the template job was setup as a batch layout, the input of the text creates several batch plates.



In our next sample, we have a small plate in a multiple layout.
Again you must only select the text that is variable in the layout.



We could have used Copy Input again for this sample, but instead we will try using the Windows™ clipboard. I have the text opened in Windows™ Notepad below.




Use your mouse to highlight the text or go to the Edit menu and click on Select All. Then go to the Edit menu in Notepad and select Copy.



Next, we go back to our template in XGW. With the variable text selected, we go to the Edit menu and select Paste.

As you can see below, the text automatically creates multiple plates filling up our sheet of material.

You can also use copy input to put a large amount of text on a single plate. Before doing the copy input, you must set your plate size, letter height and font. We have used the following plate size, letter height and font.





Next, select the text file to be used.


The text is now on the plate and can be formatted.




Finished plate

Copy and Paste also works from programs other than Notepad. You can copy text from a customer’s e-mail.

Text can also be copied from Excel. When using copy and paste from Excel, the text will need to be in a single column.

As shown in the examples above, Copy Input in XGW is very easy to use. With just a few simple steps, a large job can be created. Order entry errors in your production department can also be eliminated by using text files created by your customer. Using this feature will make your company more efficient and productive.