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.

Tags: SCAL 2.0, tool bar, text tool, tutorial

In Sure Cuts A Lot 2 there is a built in feature called Autotrace.

This feature allows you to import image files such as (.bmp, .jpeg, .gif, .png) and will attempt to automatically trace the image for cutting. You will have to note, results may vary depending on the source image file.

Now we know what it is... lets see how it works…

Autotrace Image
In order to autotrace an image we will Choose "Trace Image" feature. You can get there either from the File menu or you can just click the "Trace Image" button located on the top of the screen . This will bring up the Autotrace window.

Choose An Image
When the window appears you will first need to choose the "Browse.." button... from there you may have to navigate in order to find the image file you would like to trace.
Once we hit ok you will see a colorized version of your photo you're trying to trace.
We can hit the preview button to see if the Autotrace fits our needs. If the trace needs tweaking then we will have to adjust the following settings. Prior to hitting ok we may want to see what each of these do.

Autotrace Settings
So let us take a look at the Autotrace settings…

• The Brightness control: adjusts the brightness of the source image to help the autotracer distinguish what should be traced.
• The Corner Control : this determines how the trace program should handle corners found.
• Despeckle: This removes tiny shapes , like stray dots or speckles. This will help clean up the source image
• Optimize: This can help reduce the number of nodes/points
• Break Apart Outlines: It will put each separate shape or line into  its own layer in the trace folder.  The layers can be moved, deleted, or hidden just like a layered svg.

As a reminder the autotrace results may vary depending on the contents of the source image file. Craft Edge suggests for best results trace solid filled objects over a white background.
Output
Preview: Allows you to see the resulting tracing of the image with the specified settings
Save: Allows you to save the output to a SVG file
OK: This will add the resulting trace to the virtual mat

Now that we have explained the settings it is time to hit ok. Because we selected Break Apart Outlines we are now able to go to Object> Ungroup. This allows us to move, delete, and show and hide the different layers.

Now you're ready to start tracing in 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.

Tags: text tool, moving text

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.

Tags: Sure Cuts A Lot, svg, importing svg, SCAL, SCAL 2.0, multi-layer

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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Tags: SCAL 2.0, tutorial, text tool, tracing image