And now for something completely different

December sees my last Under the Hood feature for SignLink magazine. It has been a lovely twelve months and over the course of the year I have interviewed some very interesting people for Under the Hood and seen some fantastic work produced on a variety of machines. It really has been great to be able to share these experiences with you and hopefully you have found the articles useful in your quest for equipment and ideas.

Moving on

This month I am looking at a software programme, instead of a piece of hardware and I have been dying to have an in-depth look at the AVA CadCam programme ever since I saw it at Heimtextil in January this year. It is one of those programmes that you never knew you needed until you saw it, and then wondered how you ever managed without it.


Based in Macclesfield, AVA is a company whose ethos centres on the customer and helping them achieve their goals and ambitions in design for print. As many of you may know, there are some software packages out there, like Photoshop and Illustrator, that will manage design and repeat pattern, but most were designed for a different market. AVA was made for design, and repeat, colour, and presentation. In essence, it is an interiors, wall-coverings and textile designer’s dream design and print package, and a must-have if you want to be taken seriously in this market.


That is why I am covering this software in depth this month: you may already have the printer and the skills but by adding this one piece of software, what you’re doing, in effect, is adding another revenue stream to your business, for not a lot of money.

Breaking it down

I’m not going to get too technical here but to explain, AVA is a modular software system which is great, because you only purchase what you need, when you need it. They have two methods of paying for the software: either outright or on a yearly licence fee. The licence includes twice-yearly updates for the lifetime of the policy and comes in at a third of the outright price. I would recommend purchasing this way if you are thinking of adding AVA as a new string to your bow as you will be able to recoup the costs much quicker than with an outright purchase.

The main module that sign-makers and display graphics companies looking to enter the wall-coverings and textile markets may be most interested in is Quick Separations. This comes packaged with the Create and Repeat module.

The Colour module can be added on if calibrating monitors to printers is important to you and colour is key for your customers. Materialize module lets you realistically map your (or your customers) designs onto one of AVA’s room scenes or take a photo of your customers room or job and create your own mapped area to crop in the design.




















Training is essential with whatever software package you buy, and AVA is no different. The company also has a large tech support and training team on hand to help remotely with any issues or teething problems that may occur.

During the full demonstration I had at the company’s HQ in Macclesfield I went through all the aspects that I thought would be useful for someone looking to enter the décor market. The basics steps in creating powerful patterns and designs for your customers and pitching for new business are:

• Create and Repeat—in a short space of time create powerful    complicated designs that repeat perfectly
• Quick Separations—for colour separations and colourway options and spot pantone colours
• Layout window—for visualisation of your different colourway designs
• Materialize—for 3D photo-realistic mapped designs onto in-built AVA room scenes or create your own library of images based on your clients’ requirements.

You can start with scanning in images and textures to use as back-ground designs. The system is layer-based and anyone familiar with Photoshop or Illustrator should understand this method of working, but if not, it is still pretty easy to understand. Working with layers helps you match colours, change each layer separately, and when you are ready to move on you can ‘flatten’ the layers to make one image.

Essentially you are working on a repeat ‘tile’ which previews the repeat in the viewer window beside the ‘tile’ you are working on and it shows the pattern in real-time repeat. This is incredibly useful and a very powerful design tool so you can see what you are doing in real time. You can set the pattern to any number of drops and repeats including half-drop, square, quarter, and more. The layers view as an ‘overprint’ as in traditional screen printing, and it displays automatically what the different layers look like one on top of the other, blended as opposed to other design packages where the layered designs are placed one on top of the other with no merge, i.e. block colour.

Real time design

There are a whole set of filters that you can use also to create different effects, or you can create and save your own. You can also create a whole set of brushes based on your designs or an image. Everything you move, change, edit, or design is done in real time and shown in the repeat box as you design. The tool set included means you can create very complex repeat patterns in a very short space of time.

The Colour tool in AVA Quick Separation allows you to quickly take an image, select up to 25 colours and change the values in them to create different colourways for more control over the image. Traditionally you would use six to eight colours in screen printing so if you use this option, suddenly your digital print starts to look very much like a screenprint.



It is important to note that AVA Supports XRite i1 for accurate pro-filing and it also interfaces with Datacolor Microflash, XRite SP, and Barbieri spectrophotometers.

And finally…

I’m delighted to have come to the end of my season with SignLink by reviewing this product—AVA is one of those products that if you don’t see it, you don’t know you need it. I hope I’ve been able to do justice to a product that I feel could take a sign-maker or dis-play graphics company into the new and exciting market of digitally printed interiors and textiles.


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