New Workflow

[Joe]

I'm running the latest and greatest Xitron Sierra workflow. Just upgraded last month.

The multi-web stuff was nonexistent, until version 4... the newest version 6.x is good. I'm doing multi-web impos for a 22 station Merc... pulling upwards of 5 webs, usually down around 3 or 4, but the multiweb stuff is solid now. I have even mixed 3/4 webs and double parallel into multi web impositions, all native in Sierra. I used to be a die-hard Preps junkie but I gotta say, the native Sierra imposition is super slick... I like it better than Preps, now.

I love the new version and the guys at Xitron are great. I'm busting out over 100, 8-up plates per day... 100 line news, up to 175 line magazine and sheetfed too. All by me onesy. My Prinergy buddies, locally, aren't nearly as fast as us Xitron guys.   

Sierra (which is the new big brother of Navigator), was a spinoff of XMF, but Xitron has it as their own licensed product now, and has really focused on the multi-web areas more than Fuji, who seems to be all-in on sheetfed.

Yeah multi web impose could be done easily on the version of XMF we started with. Multi-section is where it couldn't go. Or at least the trainers/support couldn't get it to go there. The nice thing about Preps multi-section templates is that it can deliver multiple sigs in one press run. And you can mix and match them to either run the same section multiple up or different sections and it will keep the collation marks correct for whatever signature you see it to be on that one press run. On our single web 64 page press we can run anything from 16 four page sections all different or all the same up (or mixed) to a single 64 page section or any combination in between. Now while we could sort of make XMF do that with the pages...XMF could not get the collation marks to show the correct signatures since multi-section impos are not native to XMF impo and they are with Prinergy.

[Ear]

I can do multi-section in Sierra. I actually used it as a workaround for a couple of missing features, until the new release.

[Joe]

Yeah XMF might have it now as it has been a couple of years ago when we tried to switch.

[Ear]

The fella at Xitron made it clear that they made the split from Fuji a few years ago, when their initial development contract was up. I have the feeling Sierra and XMF will continue to drift from one another, as they are now independently maintained.