numbering raffle tickets

[neckbone]

Well, if InPosition has cut stacks available as an imposition type, you should be able to just create your ticket 1-up in Quark, use master pages to do the numbering and then run it through InPosition.

-Adam

[pspdfppd]

Adam,

I dont think InPosition has a stacks feature.


Anyone else know?

With my crazy method the Quark file sometimes gets up to 1GB in one 500 ticket file!

This is insane for sure

[Sparky]

We have an actual numbering machine that we can number pre-printed pieces in up to 4 positions and calibrate exactly where each number is placed. It prints up to 6 digits and when we switch heads can have a lot of size and color choices.
We do a lot of tickets for golf courses and church raffles and such. The only drawback is that it's so damn loud, it sounds like someone hammering on the wall when its running.

[Migel]

My boss came to me about a year and a half ago with that same problem. The way I dealt with it was to create a simple program that creates sorted lists of numbers and then outputs them to comma delminated files that I could then use in a merge. So if I wanted tickets that went 1 to 500 ten up my program would create a file that would be 1,51,101,151,201 and so on.

[pspdfppd]

ah...guess if you survive in this racket long enough you're eventually gonna get "PREPS"....now it'd be nice to make those stacked raffle tickets .........

[spaga]

if you have tickets and make them say 3up

make an excel file with your numbers and use 3 colums to equal your numbers

make a file with your merge lined up one column for each ticket (you can even use ms word for this :lol: )

lay the merge file on top of the master page (our b/w use xerox freeflow) and print and when you cut your stacks are in order

[Glars]

I'm no Excel guru but for stacked numbers, I just setup an Excel file and do a data merge

For 4 stacks of 100;

a1: 1
a2: =sum(a1,1000)
a3: =sum(a1,200)
a4: =sum(a1,300)
a5: =sum(a1,1)

then just copy/paste a2-a5 until you reach 100

[pr0t0]

Hello Everyone! This is my first post...caught the story in American Printer today.

I wrote this script to work with InDesign. Are we allowed to post Scripts? The way I do it is I create the ticket as an EPS in illustrator and then place it accordingly in an InDesign file. Then I create the text boxes for the raffle numbers and apply necessary styling. Doing this makes the only text boxes in the document, boxes for the raffle numbers. ID assigns a "number" to every text box you make, I still haven't figured out the order (across then down, or maybe vice-versa).

That probably didn't make much sense, but if you look at the code, you can see how it works. And it does work, beautifully. Number 00002 is under 00001 in the stack so that when you cut them, everything is in order.

Hope this works for you!

set myNumber to 0

on add_leading_zeros(this_number, max_leading_zeros)
set the threshold_number to (10 ^ max_leading_zeros) as integer
if this_number is less than the threshold_number then
set the leading_zeros to ""
set the digit_count to the length of ((this_number div 1) as string)
set the character_count to (max_leading_zeros + 1) - digit_count
repeat character_count times
set the leading_zeros to (the leading_zeros & "0") as string
end repeat
return (leading_zeros & (this_number as text)) as string
else
return this_number as text
end if
end add_leading_zeros


tell application "Adobe InDesign CS2"

activate

set myDocument to active document

--set the beginning number
set numBegin to 1

--set the end number
set numEnd to 150

--set the number of times the item is on the page
set numUp to 10

--set the number of leading zeros (i.e. setting to 5 will yield a 6 digit number)
set numZeros to 5

--calculate total sheets needed
set numPrint to ((numEnd - (numBegin - 1)) / numUp)

repeat with counter from 1 to numPrint
tell myDocument
repeat with subcounter from 1 to numUp
tell text frame subcounter of page 2
set contents to add_leading_zeros(((counter + numBegin - 1) + ((subcounter - 1) * numPrint)), numZeros) of me
end tell
end repeat
set subcounter to 1
print without print dialog
end tell
end repeat

end tell

[pr0t0]

I noticed on the script I posted, it had the line:
tell text frame subcounter of page 2

you may want that to read:
tell text frame subcounter of page 1

I had to modify that for a job that had numbering on the back only.

[dkinsac]

We use excel but we have an HP Indigo 5000 that prints Varible Data! That makes it pretty darn easy!