Form Desigining For OMR Scanners

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Form Designing for OMR Forms is the bottom as these are base for
accurate readings. A wrongly designed form can be hassle so
recommendations are to consult the professional once the design is
being finalised .

a. Good Software which should have specially CMYK as Colors as most
Sheets are Magenta and Black .The safe colors are very important, as
unsafe colors cannot be dropped out and will give additional readings
from OMR. Visible read heads (ie capable of reading both pen and pencil
) works in Red Specturum while infrared (only Pencil read heads) works
with Green /Blue or Red .

I have seen people using Corel Draw , Autocad , or Specially for OMR
Sheet designing they have Magenta from Datablocks or FILIPS from
Scantron , they all work good . If you ask me what I use I use Adobe
Illustrator and Macromedia Free Hand .

In My next article I can give you some information on how to
effectively use the same .
b. The most important aspect is how you get your forms printed from
here on . Is it Digital Print or Offset print , or Some Colored Copy of
the same. Different process takes place , Digital print is useful for
lower quantity and also if you have some pre-printed thing like Roll No
or Lithocode. These days fast speed Digital Copiers are also available
in the market . They are costly but can reduce much of your operations
time.
c. Offset Printers needs to do the best in registration, if your black
and magenta registration does not match , I am sorry but you will end
up whole process in mess
d. Offset Printers need to work good in cutting as well . A good
cutting machine for cutting of OMR Sheets is required as Usually an OMR
reader does not have more than 2 mm of Tolerance
e. A good Paper which does not stick to each other or catches the dust
is a recommended always.
f. I remember of one of my printer in his initial days the printer
shrunk the original image just to make sure that everything fits on
the particular size and fun is that my client tried to make the
template on the top of it and try to read the data. The Bubbles are at
special positions depending what pitch of scanner you are using .
Standards are 1/6 inches with 48 Columns or Channels

Thus form designing is critical for successful implemenation of OMR
process . Next we will discuss how best we can design forms for Remark
Office OMR and OMR Softwares for Normal Scanners .

I look forward to hear from you on all this articles and your
experiences and requirments .