by Sandy McCauley | Nov 6, 2009 | Editing, Free Videos, Guidelines
Credit for today’s post goes to Brenda Josselet who has found a quick way to align nodes horizontally or vertically, thus making editing straight line images much easier. I was so impressed with her discovery that I just had to come up with a name for it that would make it hers forever. So, I’m calling it Josselet’s Jostle It because you do kind of jostle the nodes in the process!
😛
Here’s the video to see how it works. I’ve also added a few more things you may not have thought of before, so hopefully there’s something for everyone in this post. Thanks again, Brenda, for sharing your discovery!
Josselet’s Jostle It
by Sandy McCauley | Jun 24, 2009 | Fan Shape Tool, Free Videos, Guidelines, Polyarc
Rachel in New Zealand contacted me yesterday with a design request. She wanted to recreate a slightly unusual welded word title she had found on a card. The above screen shot shows the image based on the design she sent to me. So, how do you create it easily? Well, maybe you would like to give it a shot yourself first in KNK Studio before watching the video. Hint… I started with the Fan Shape.
Modified Fan Video
If you are interested in learning more about welded lettering, be sure to check out two videos I sell in my store: Creating Welded Letter Titles and Creating Monograms. I now sell directly via Paypal and my videos can also be purchased at Scrapbook Die Cutter via credit card and Paypal.
by Sandy McCauley | Oct 24, 2008 | Circles, Free Videos, Guidelines
A while back, at one of the many cutter Yahoo groups I scan and read, a member asked how to divide a circle into 7 equal segments (or maybe it was 5?) in “this other cutting software program.” The response to her question was that there wasn’t an easy to do that and just eye-balling it would be the only way. That immediately made me think about whether there was an easy way to do it in KNK Studio… basicially, how do you create the following image:
Well, being a fan of anything mathematical, I had to see if I could figure it out and within a few minutes I had one method… then after thinking about it for awhile, I came up with an easier method. In today’s video I show how to create a circle segment that would represent 1/7 of a whole circle and also how to create the other six and align them to form the above look. Of course, that might not be necessary if you were cutting them from individual colors like the above figure suggests. On the other hand, just in case you do need them properly rotated and arranged, I show that in the video. I failed to show how to recolor each segment, but I’m guessing you can figure out that part on your own. 🙂
Dividing a Circle into Segments
by Sandy McCauley | Sep 29, 2008 | Centering, Free Videos, Guidelines, Overlay
CeCe contacted me a few weeks ago after designing and test cutting her overlay to find out how to get the various elements on her overlap to be more evenly centered. I helped her and made a note of how this could be a useful video for others. Even if you aren’t doing an overlay, these same techniques could be use for a greeting card design or other applications.
After finishing the video, I realized that I didn’t make it clear that to bring up the Edit Guidelines window, you need to make sure no objects are selected. So, click away to do that and then RIGHT click on your Sign Blank to open that window. If you have any questions about this video, feel free to post!
by Sandy McCauley | Jul 29, 2008 | Axis Swap, Guidelines, Job Palette, Sign Blank, Tiling, Tracing
Today’s topic covers the little things you can inadvertently click in KNK Studio or Design Master that will cause something “bad” to happen. Now by “bad”, I don’t mean anything catastrophic! lol I’m referring to those moments when something just doesn’t look right and you don’t know now to fix it! The following are some of the ones reported by users and hopefully, by reading and understanding each one, you won’t have to worry about them happening to you. 🙂
Problem: When I cut my image, the machine also tries to cut out my cardstock! Or, my KNK goes out of range when I’m just trying to cut a small image.
Cause: More than likely, you have inadvertently created a Sign Blank object, which is nothing more than a rectangle the exact same size as your Sign Blank. Because users often go to Layout>Blank Size, they might mistakenly click on the option right below that menu choice, which is Layout>Sign Blank Object.
Solution: To remove the Sign Blank object, simply click on the border of your Sign Blank and you will see the 9 little boxes appear. Click on the delete key to remove it.
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Problem: Whenever I turn on Fill, my entire Sign Blank turns black (or some other color).
Cause: Again, you may have a Sign Blank object as stated above. So check that first. But the other possibility is that you have changed the color of your Sign Blank. I’m not sure if there’s more than one way to make this happen. I was the first person to report this to Accugraphic and Chad had to ask CADLink how to fix it.
Solution: Turns out, all you need to do is drag the color White from the Shop Palette and drop it onto your Sign Blank. Thus, that’s probably how I did it in the first place, but because I keep Fill turned off most of the time, I didn’t realize I had done it. Anyhow, this comes up every few weeks, so either the users are doing this same thing or there’s some other way to make it happen that we’ve not yet discovered.
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Problem: When I type text, I can’t see anything being typed and after finishing, I have an unusual little icon with a little arrow or something.
Cause: You have typed in a TINY size of text. This first came up about a month after KNK Studio was first released and it took me another month to figure out what the user had done wrong! Finally a screen shot identified the size of the text in the text window as being 0.001.”
Solution: In the Text Smart Bar, increase the size of the text back to a reasonable size… e.g. 1.00″.
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Problem: I’m trying to edit my image but the program won’t let me drag the nodes.
Cause: You probably have Snap to Grid turned on, which applies in all modes, including node editing.
Solution: Outdent the Snap To Grid icon or go to Options>Grid>Snap to Grid and uncheck.
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Problem: When I cut, my image is cutting the wrong direction.
Cause: I’m probably to blame for this one more than anyone since I created the video on “Understanding the Sign Blank” which was before Design Master or KNK Studio GE were released. And images cut differently with a KNK than with one of the 8″ Graphtec Cutters. Note that with a Klic-N-Kut, you control Portrait vs Landscape cutting by checking or unchecking Axis Swap. With Design Master, you leave Axis Swap unchecked and cut Landscape by rotating the image -90 degrees in the Cut Preview window. With KNK Studio GE, you leave Axis Swap unchecked but change the Orientation to Landscape in the Layout>Blank Size window, unless you own a blue Wishblade (in which case, you do it the same way as with Design Master). Whew.
Solution: Check your Axis Swap setting under Cut>Plotting Defaults or check your Landscape vs Portait setting under Layout>Blank Size and modify the settings based on which cutter and which software you’re using.
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Problem: When I cut my image, the cutter returns to the start and cuts the last part on top of the first part.
Cause: The cutter is basically doing something called tiling, in which it thinks it has run out of room to complete the cut.
Solution: Go to Cut>Plotting Defaults, click on Setup and make the Machine Limits larger. Don’t hesitate to increase those values to something outside the range of what you think you’ll ever cut.
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Problem: I can no longer see the colors I’ve used on my Job Palette. I just see a yellow triangle with an exclaimation point.
Cause: You have inadvertently switched to Foil View. (This one just came up yesterday… thanks, Lynn for troubleshooting your OWN issue! 🙂
Solution: Click on the little 3 dot button on the Job Palette and then click on Color View.
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Problem: I can’t seem to create guidelines.
Cause: You have inadvertently turned off the view guidelines option.
Solution: Use Alt-W or go to Options>Guides>Use Guides.
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Problem: I lost one of my default trace settings.
Cause: If you click on Delete when you are in the Trace Settings window, the currently-selected default will be gone.
Solution: You simply need to find out the values for that setting and then re-enter them and type in a new name and save. I created a quickie video to show this, and typed up the default settings. See post on July 30, 2008.
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I will plan to add more to this list as I think of them and will announce in a new post. Hope you find this helpful and if you have some suggestions, let me know!
