A Couple of Additional Useful Quirks

by | Jun 28, 2008 | Contour Object, Free Videos, Round Corner, Transformation

After discovering that using a marquis-select during Transform>Contour Object would produce another outline, I then started experiment with marquis-select while inside other Transform menu functions. Here’s what I found:

  • Under Transform>Round Corner, after you’ve set a corner radius, you can reset back to 0, by marquis-selecting your object. This is useful since there is no Reset button on the Smart Bar in that window.

  • Under Transform>Transformation, you can distort your image, then marquis-select and it will return you to the main Sign Blank… but wait! If you then do an Undo (Edit>Undo or Ctrl-Z), you will not only get your original back but you will still have your transformed image. Now this would be very useful if you want to create a variety of different transformations from the same original image. Let’s say you wanted to create a starfish and have a number of them with slightly different looks… very quick using this method!

In light of reports that this is not as easy at it looks, I created a quickie video showing exactly what I’m doing. Watch this: Transformation Quirk

Clipping

by | Jun 25, 2008 | Clipping, Free Videos

There’s a menu item under Arrange called “Clipping” and, because I couldn’t find a use for it, I basically ignored it while writing the KNK User Manual. I asked Chad at Accugraphic what it was for and he showed me how it worked, but we were using vector images and I couldn’t see how it provided anything more than what we got from using the AND weld tool.

Well, late yesterday, I was browsing CADLink’s forum and someone was wanting to fill a vector image with a pattern and CADLink’s response was to use the Clipping function. Hello? Clipping? I immediately remembered we had that feature in KNK Studio but I hadn’t never been told that it worked with raster images!

So, I played with with and discovered you can “fill” any vector image with clipart or a photo or, what they call a texture…. and there are hundreds of free textures out on the Internet… just google “free textures!” For the most part, this would probably be used in a Print and Cut situation. And I also show in my demo video how to shrink your trace lines so that you remove the error you get when cutting too close to the outside of a colored image. ClippingVideo

If you’ve ever seen the Lettering Delight Alphabets sold at http://www.letteringdelights.com/, then this is exactly a way to create some of their original ones, except you’ll be able to cut them with your KNK or CR/WB/Silhouette! Also, this would be useful, if you wanted to cut out a foldup box, for example, and you wanted it to be colored with a particular pattern. You could even scan in your own patterns from your patterned paper collection. You could also use these kinds of patterns for paper doll clothes or how about cutting out the shape of a suitcase from a montage of vacation photos. Oh… the possibilities are endless! 🙂

The Dreaded Skewing

by | Jun 21, 2008 | Skewing

Ten things that can cause skewing on a Klic-N-Kut.

(1) Pinch wheels are too loose.

(2) One pinch wheel is a lot tighter than the other.

(3) Pinch wheels are too close together.

(4) One or both pinch wheels are over the smooth part of the grit shaft.

(5) Cut speed is too fast for the material being cut

(6) Blade is too long (thus digging into mat).

(7) Mat is too thin for the cutter.

(8) Something is interfering with the movement of the mat during cutting.

(9) Bad or damaged pinch wheel.

(10) Grit shaft was damaged during shipping (FedEx and UPS treat the boxes horribly).

Overcut and Trailing Blade

by | Jun 21, 2008 | Overcut, Trailing Blade

Here’s a chart to remind you of the settings for Overcut and Trailing Blade on a Klic-N-Kut. Remember that if you need to find it again, simply go to my list of Labels on the right side and click on either Overcut or Trailing Blade from the alphabetized list and this blog will appear in the search.