I'm failing to see a decent feed tray on all these 'vinyl cutters', which is probably why they need alignment marks, feed sheets and optical sensors. My Epson printer has this really cheap sliding plastic glide that when pushed up against the paper almost always guarantees that it will print in the correct position.
I'm assuming that by feeding the card/paper in by hand these devices are only designed for cutting shapes for templates, signs and other crafts, they weren't designed for the purpose your trying to use them for.
As for vector graphics, pepakura can produce a .dxf, but this file is useless 'as is' and needs manual editing to produce a cut/score file. Should point out here that the pepakura format contains enough information to auto generate a cut/score file.
The issue I see is the correct conversion from vector to scaled sheet, dxf doesn't contain scale info, so when you import it to other software your going to have to scale and align it manually, which is as tedious as cutting out the sheets with scissors.
I think all that is lacking in these desktop devices is the correct software and a decent optional feed tray. Is it worth talking to these companies about such problems? The needs of the paper modelers would open up other possibilities in other craft areas.
@airdave
where you live? where in your house is the plotter? when do you go out? do you have wonder woman wallpaper?
