@tobyschachman designed a handy Kid’s Name Puzzle generator. All you have to do is type some text and you get a file with all the parts you need to cut it, including properly placed finger holes for each letter.
You can also pick your own fonts and sizing. The file is automatically generated and ready to cut. You don’t have to worry about boolean operations or converting text to paths.
The video covers:
Adding multiple lines and using international characters
How to assemble and paint the puzzle.
Choosing kid-friendly supplies.
I also took the opportunity to try a few different paints and came up with a big favorite that gave me a nice flat look like in the name below:
The Name Puzzle template is free to use for the next week, then it will become a Cuttle Pro template. Also, here is an SVG of numerals that will be free forever (right-click and select “save as”).
I wanted it to work with any letters in any font and I wanted the finger holds to be placed automatically. (Federico even surprised me with a Japanese one he made for his niece!)
At first I figured the top-center would be a good spot but you’ll notice for letters like LUN that you really want the circle centered on an actual point on the letter:
One of Cuttle’s powerful features is that you can write your own modifiers in JavaScript when you need to extend its functionality.
This was one of the reasons we started making Cuttle in the first place! I wanted a vector editor I could draw in but also write code in when necessary.
I used a custom modifier to implement the finger hold placement, with a dozen lines of code:
Here is how I did it before the new features (masks and custom fonts) were added. I used letter shaped vector outlines. Your new solution allows for typeface choices.
