depending on your cutter, you might be able to buy a silhouette sticky mat and use it as a backing for paper in your machine. Your cutter would need to be able to handle the thickness of mat + paper.
Silhouette owners: how thick is the sticky mat? anyone got some calipers handy?
Another option is to design the cuts with some gaps to hold the loose cut-out bits in place, and finishing with a blade by hand.
Or use a perf-cut if your cutter/software has such an option. My graphtec does, that was a feature I was very interested in at the time of purchase, but I have yet to try it out.
āSo much time, so little to do.
No, wait, reverse that.ā - W.W.
Got my Silhouette Connect license today to use the plugin with CorelDraw. Just did one quick test cutting a stencil out of office paper to use for air brushing (just to try out the workflow). Iām still getting used to my Curio but I like this workflow better than using Silhouette Studio.
The Silhouette cutting mat is quite sticky at the begining but less when you use it many times. You can wash it and then re-stick it when needed. You can also adapt Cricut and Sizzix eclips ones on your Cameo. Cricut and Silhouette offer different sticky mats: very sticky, normal and light.
I just put this up in the babyās room tonight. My wife is really enjoying asking me for things lol. The little boy is a little less than three months away.
I have a Silhouette Cameo that is not out of box yet, I am following these posts with interest as I am learning how to use this compared to my Cricut. I was hoping there would be similarities to working with my Glowforge.
So the one thing I am a bit unclear onā¦ do you need the subscription service to make your own designs on the Silhouett line of products? or can you just buy the device and use inkscape to make kewl things? Iāve looked and havenāt found a clear answer.
Kewl, so I wont need a subscriptionā¦ Thatās awesomeā¦ Iāve been thinking of getting one so I can make some things that would be much easier to do with the Silhouette rather than the Gforge.
@ray716 I saw you viewed my posts in Show & Tell. Show and Tell All items there were made on a Silhouette Cameo. I also make car decals for myself and friends. Heat transfer vinyl for shirts is my new favorite. I find the Cameo software easy to work with. It has good point editing and trace functions. Also love using the print & cut for cards and stickers. Youāll love the machine.
It is a pain that you need to buy an upgrade for this functionality. At least you can usually find it on sale for cheaper. Hereās a link.
$27.82 at the Walmart online store. Bringing in SVGs works well with this upgrade.
Never knew that it accepted dfx files. Good to know as I expand my design software options for the GF. Will be nice to have some cross functionality of designs between machines.
Ive had a silhouette cameo for a couple of years. For the most part, I like it. I got glowforge because I want bigger and better and faster and sturdier materials And more delicate materials (spent ages trying to get the cameo to cut old paper and itās fairly impossible). And if it can manage to be quieter than the cameo, that would be great too.
As for the software, I donāt think the designer edition is work it. It lets you import SVG files, but it doesnāt let you save a file as an SVG. Which is annoying. The basic version has a feature called offset. You can offset orā¦ Onset? I mean, you can offset outside of the shape/cut or inside (so, buigger or smaller). Itās not exactly like the ānestingā feature, because it loses detail of complicated, intricate shapes, but will work for some applications. And, of course, just copy, paste, and resize to nest a shape yourself. It takes longer, but not $50 longerā¦
And I would not recommend designing a bunch of stuff in the silhouette software, basic or designer, to use not-on-a-silhouette machine. Much, much easier to design it elsewhere and be able to use it in Silhouette or anywhere else.
If you design something to trace in Silhouette, remember that the trace feature works on contrast. So make the shape black. Also, design it larger than you want, trace it, and then resize it to the size you need. Trace has a tendency to smooth a bit too much and youāll lose detail. Scaling it down doesnāt.
Iāve owned a Silhouette and a few other machines for several years now and mainly use them for vinyl cutting. Those machines have been my gateway ādrugā to a GF
I can recommend a program called āMake the Cutā for basic design and importation of SVG files from other programs such as Corel or Illustrator. I personally find it easier to use than the Silhouette program. For a lot of basic stuff I just design directly in Make the Cut. Mostly though I take my designs from Corel Draw and use MTC for layout and communicating with the the cutter MTC works with most machines other than Cricuts (The Cricut company are pretty much big bullies.)
And more delicate materials (spent ages trying to get the cameo to cut old paper and itās fairly impossible). And if it can manage to be quieter than the cameo, that would be great too.
