Sure Cuts A Lot 2 - Tool Bar
The Toolbar is composed of the most common tools that you are likely to use in the Sure Cuts A Lot program.
The top one here is known as your Selection Tool. This tool is used to select either individual or multiple objects on the mat. Once you have clicked an object on the mat you will notice a boding box appears. It is this bounding box that enables you to move, scale, and rotated that selected object.
The next tool in the menu is the Type Tool. This button looks a little different because it has a hidden feature or submenu. By holding your mouse button down you are able to select between the Regular Type Tool and the Vertical Type Tool. Just select which one you desire and you are ready to type. Just click anywhere on the virtual mat and you can start typing
The next two tools are pretty self explanatory they are your ZoomIn and ZoomOut tools. You select either one of these and it will either increase or decrease your magnification of the mat
Finally we have the Hand Tool. Once you selected the hand tool you can will have to click and drag on the mat. This acts as if you grabbed the mat you're sliding it over so you can see what else is on the page.
How to Moving Letters to Weld - Sure Cuts A Lot 2
Alright, Moving Letters for Welding…
There are a few ways to move letters within text using the Sure Cuts A Lot program, so that they overlap for welding. We will discuss 3 methods
1. First we will Choose the Selection Tool from the Tools window. Next we will Click on the text to select it on the mat. Just go to the Object menu and choose Ungroup. From there You can then move the individual letters around wherever you wish.
2. First we will Choose the Selection Tool from the Tools window. Then we will Click on the text that we wish adjust letter spacing. Then let us look at the Properties window, we should see a Text section. In the Text section window, we can then change the Tracking field. This will alter the spacing between each letter. Decreasing the value will bring those letters closer together.
3. Choose the Text Tool from the Tools window. Click and drag over the letters you wish to change. The letters should be highlighted. In the Text section in the Properties window, you can change the Tracking field to adjust the letter spacing for the highlighted letters.
Let's Talk Grouping: Inkscape and SCAL2
Someone sent us a file and a question on how to get things set up in Inkscape so they could import into SCAL 2 matching up correct sizes and cut based on color. So I Uploaded this video tutorial this past weekend to youtube. It demonstrates an easier approach than layering your SVG to import into SCAL 2. It's done by grouping... what you want to have grouped do it all in inkscape and imported in to SCAL 2 allowing you to Ungroup/Show/Hide/Move/Resize your pieces all around in SCAL 2. Works great for doing that multi-cut projects.
New Import SVG Feature in SCAL 2.0
If you're doing a multi cut project or a paper piecing project then you should watch this tutorial on how SCAL 2.0 can save you time and paper. SCAL 2.0 will allow you to import your whole SVG file that you either created or download. Once you have it imported, you can size it and then ungroup it. That way you will be able to only cut the colors you would like to cut (assuming your SVG is set up/designed correctly prior to import) by using the Show/Hide features in your Layers Palette. This video shows you that SCAL has built in as a layer detector when importing your SVG thus making your life easier when trying to size everything correctly and cutting what you want to cut.
Please take the time to watch the video and check out Our Store! Just look for the EZ SVG for SCAL 2 in the description of our files, we're in the process of converting our entire collection for EZ Importing. Our current Freebie has a EZ Importing Folder if you would like to work along with this project.
If you want to know how to prep your multi-cut SVG in Inkscape, we will have a tutorial on this on a later date.
Two New Feature Tutorials for SCAL2.0
The first video will explain how to do a simple trace with in SCAL. Before we had to use inkscape to do a trace of an image. Now SCAL 2.0 has it built right in.
The AutoTrace is a welcomed addition to the SCAL 2.0. Since it's a new feature you may still have to use Inkscape to get the desired results. The trace feature works well with silhouette type images. Probably expect in later editions for this feature to improve. At least they give you options that you can do a tweak and preview. The preview option allows you to see what the trace program has found and shows you what you can expect if you hit OK.
The second video goes briefly over the TEXT Tool and the Property Box. It will also show you how it is different when it's compared to SCAL version 1.XX. It will go over the Text Properties Box as well as Making Fonts your favorite.
New Features on Text Tool
- Select All
- Add Favorite Font you like to use
- Group
- UnGroup
- Tracking
- Text Width
- Text Height
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SCAL Version 2.0 Now Available!
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New Converter Application
Our SCUT files come already proportioned correctly. We know that they are sized the way you may not want. So we created this application to help you with measurements. To use this you will need the original SCUT files that come with our downloads. It allows you to precisely match things up if you decide that our files aren't the exact size you need. 
Click Here to Use our Web Application
Sure Cuts A Lot: How to Install Font
We created this tutorial for the beginner in SCAL. SCAL is a great program that allows you to cut with your Cricut Machine True Type Fonts on your computer. This tutorial will show you how to get new fonts onto your Windows computer and use them in SCAL. We provide 2 Methods on this. You can either install this in the Font Folder or just open the file so SCAL can see it. Keep in mind if you install too many fonts using the Font Folder method other programs such as WORD and programs that are like that may take longer to load, because it's initializing all the fonts that are installed.
Sure Cuts A Lot - Shapes Property Window Explained
Click the Photo to Start Video
We received an email asking us about how to create a shadow effect in SCAL and decided to just do a whole tutorial explaining the features of the Shape Property Box.
This tutorial will explain the Shape Property Box, that allows the SCAL users to add shadow or black out text. This box also allows us to be more precise and even weld items together, and all done using the Sure Cuts A Lot program.
Tutorial: Sizing Correctly in SCAL using multiple SVG files
Happy April Fools Days! When we first got SCAL we were wondering how are we going to save paper on cutting a pattern that has multi colors that needed to be cut. Well this technique that the video goes though should help you with this. The video goes though two different ways to accomplish the same goal. We know that there are other methods out there, but these two work just fine.
The reason for this tutorial is because when you import items into SCAL it isn't a 1 to 1 ratio. Meaning you will have to resize each SVG file as a whole to match all the pieces up.
This video will go over:
- Saving your SVG files based on Color
- Importing them into SCAL
- Sizing them up proportionaly so that all pieces are the correct size based on your original SVG file
What we do is we separate the files by color and we have one that is saved with everything with all parts and pieces on that file. We save it as BearALL.svg.
We then stretch out the BearALL.svg in scal to the size we want. Then we import each colored SVG (ie BearBrown.svg) and we size up the head to match the BearALL.svg.
We do this for all the colored pieces. Another way to do proportioning on separated SVG files is...
You can place a small Star (keep it the same size) somewhere on each of your seperated SVG file. That Star allows you to match up each file to the correct porportion once you have imported all of your Color Separated SVG files into SCAL.
Once you have everything the way you want I would SAVE the project because you can delete what you are not wanting to cut, and then to get all your pieces back just go to File> Open Project
Saving Paper for SCAL using Inkscape
The goal of this tutorial is to help new people that have SCAL and are new to SVG format using Inkscape. Using Inkscape you can save time and your paper by separating pieces by color. It helps when people have already have broken apart and grouped things by color for you. However in this tutorial you will see how to do this and then import and size them properly into SCAL.
Read More...
Creating a Cut file from a JPG
- Image file in GIF, BMP, JPG, PNG format
- Inkscape - Free program on inkscape.org
- Sure Cuts A Lot - a pay program from CraftsEdge
Just follow this video tutorial and you will be able to do this fairly easy. This is a beginner level tutorial.
