I'm in sign business. We use illustrator to prepare files to cut vinyl stickers (foil) on a cutting plotter.
I suspect there is dedicated sign software that handles the problem below, but i'm stuck with illustrator to do this.
There are 2 requirements for cutting vinyl:
1. Corners can not be too sharp, or they will easily come loose.
A combination of positive and negative offset effects with "round" selected, stacked on top of eachother, does the job.
The negative offset does remove some parts however.
2. Minimum area: lines can't bee to small. En general rule of thumb is no to go below 1mm.
A function would be desired that, let's say, removes parts that are extremely small (for example 1 squared mm). Other small parts should be made somewhat thicker.
So instead manually checking and preparing every file, i want illustrator to do this for me!
Using effects, actions, scripts, plugins, whatever.
See the following image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8911045/example.png
(the insert image button doesn't seem to work with me at this moment, i'll try again later)