Does illustrator cs4 draw in vector?

Question

Hello I am looking to buy what adobe program I need, I was told adobe illustrator is a vector drawing program. Ok so my question is does that mean it is only capable of converting to vector or does that mean that if i start a new document (ANY TYPE OF DOCUMENT) and create a design will the design be in vector format?
Reason I am asking, I am currently the owner of a small sign, banner and decal business and I am running FlexiSign for my Cutting Machine. For My banners I subcontract the jobs to a bigger outfit who has proper machines to print. They need all designs to be in vector, .pdf format. So instead of having to convert everything all the time I want a program that can make the design and it is already in vector, than if i need to import a raster image I understand that I will than need to convert to vector and that is fine, but for the backround and font and whatever else I put in the design does illustrator draw in vector, like my flexi sign does, because if I create a job in flexi sign and send it to him it is already in vector, I would rather be using a adobe product...........PLEASE HELPPPPP

Answer 1

Matthew,
Illustrator is primarily a vector drawing program.
That does not mean that everything in a given Illustrator document is all vector artwork. An Illustrator document can contain vector paths, text objects, and raster images. It contains features that perform rasterization on-the-fly in order to apply effects to vector paths.
Nor does something being "vector" necessarily mean it is suitable for vinyl cutting. For example, you can apply gradients and blends to paths, and everything is "vector"; but you would not be able to render it on a vinyl cutter. For an even more basic example, you can apply strokes of any weight (thickness) to a vector path; but that by itself does not make it suitable for cutting--if you sent it to a cutter, you would just get a single cut along the center of the path.
So yes, you can use Illustrator to draw the kinds of paths that you need for your vinyl cutter. Many people do. (Corel Draw is more popuplar among sign shops.) But you need to know what you're doing; which features to use, which to avoid, and how to properly optimize the vector paths for cutting (removing overlaps, merging cross-cuts, outlining strokes, etc.)
You'll most likely need to back-save the properly-prepared artwork to an earlier version. Most vinyl cutting software can import .ai format, but not usually the current version.
Your designer is working against you by building artwork in Photoshop, if that artwork is intended for
cutting. For vinyl cutting, the artwork should be drawn as clean vector paths.
Except for certain "special cases", autotracing raster images should not be used for vinyl cutting. And in those cases, you need to fully understand what you are doing. Give up on the misconceived idea that you can just create any artwork you want, willy-nilly in Photoshop, and then use autotracing to magically "convert" it to vector artwork. That is a myth. Usually, you'll just be substituting one kind of jaggedness for another. (I've seen many sign shops do this, thinking the resulting roughness is "normal", and turn out garbage.)
You say you contract out your "banner" work to an outfit that has a large-format
printer. Yet you say that outfit insists on everything being vector. That is rather contradictory. You need all vector paths for
cutting. But any decent large format
printer can print artwork consisting of vector paths, raster images, or a combination of both.
JET