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Thursday, August 28, 2014

Manual Print Then Cut (Before The Feature Was Added To Design Space)

I know the Print Then Cut (PTC) feature is coming to Design Space, but for those of you who can't wait or have to deliver something soon, here is the way I approached it    .
Here are the images and some explaining for the tutorial on Manual Print Then Cut
This is the way I cut all the text for my baby shower invitations I did a couple of months ago.
1- Since I wanted my text to fit the shape of the onesie and I needed several printed, I made this template to create the text on Illustrator. 

I did the next steps in Illustrator, but in case you want to use your good old word processor, here's the way to do it.
Open a new letter size document and place the image above and resize it to fit the page.

Sorry if you find the Microsoft Office interface confusing in spanish, I had no language option when I installed it. 
To make it fit the whole page set your image text fit to transparent
And your top margin to 0, dragging the margin on the left ruler to the border of the page.
The next step is a little bit tedious, but you only do it once.
Draw a text box around the shape you want your text to follow (in this case the top left onesie) and start typing your text. Set your alignment to center and watch carefully not to overflow the onesie silhouette. Hit return whenever the line is too long to fit the underlying shape.
Set the contour or border of your  text box to transparent so it won't print.
Now copy the text to the other templates 
Draw a new box shape matching both of the little squares on the template. If you hold the SHIFT key you can draw a perfect square.

Now hide the back image by selecting it and deleting it from the page
This is how it should look once you are done.

Now print the document. I recommend to print several copies, because the next step is just trial and error.
Import the SVG file to CDS and resize it to 8.5 inches wide.

Set the blue layer to score and leave brown layer to cut. Then attach both layers. 

Make sure when you load the mat on your machine, you place it all the way under the rolling thingies (the white ones) of the feeding rod..

When you hit go, the machine will score first showing you if your paper or cardboard placement is off centered and where you need to move it to. Stop the machine by hitting the pause button and reposition your paper by pressing the unload button. Start all over...

This is very approximate, but it helps you cut the shape wanted for now.

Anyways, if you find this tutorial annoying and slow, here's the Word document so you only have to change the text and skip the first steps. 

Hope it helps.
Enjoy!


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