Hi folks! I made a new video tutorial on creating connected text so it can be cut in one piece. It’s using Cuttle, the web-based laser cutting design tool.
Most of the time it’s pretty easy and it only takes 3 steps:
Type some text
Choose the right font
Apply Boolean Union
And you are good to go!
Text is always ready to cut in Cuttle. Just export it as SVG. Or just copy and paste it directly into Glowforge’s app!
You don’t need to perform an extra step like “Create Outlines” (Illustrator) or “Object to Path” (Inkscape). But you do need to do Modify > Boolean Union if you want your letters to be joined.
You can choose different fonts and change the horizontal letter spacing and vertical line spacing to suit your designs even after after you have applied Boolean Union.
Not all fonts are optimized for this kind of thing though, and sometimes you need to move around some floating details like the dot above the i or j (called a tittle apparently), or accent marks or the occasional stray capital initial. That’s covered in the video too.
As long as you are using Boolean Union other shapes can be thrown in the mix so there is an example of adding a rectangle to create a simple functional object (I call it a “cake topper” in the video though I have yet to meet the maniac who puts broccoli on their cake ), I’m sure you can come up with even better uses for this.
We were thinking about making a Cuttle modifier that would just migrate all the islands to the main text.
So for each small piece (like a dot on i) it would find the direction that’s closest to the main text, then move it in that direction until it’s touching.
I love how Cuttle keeps improving, and the fact that we can just copy and paste right into GF is fantastic! Thank you all for working so hard to improve it!
), I’m sure you can come up with even better uses for this.
