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How to turn a pre-existing shape into Contour Cut

SugarShadow.EXE

New Member
Hi! I work mainly on Illustrator, but now do contour cut stickers on flexi and an HP 64 Cutter. Is there a way to take a pre-existing vector shape in flexi and give it contour cut properties? I ask because the Contour Cut filter on flexi gives way too many anchor points, and Flexi's Reduce Points feature is sub-par compared to Illustrator's Simplify feature. So far i can only do contour cut on preexisting shapes by giving it the Contour Cut filter with a 0.00 offset. I want the shapes i make in illustrator to be imported onto Flexi and just turned into Contour Cut lines, but as they are, NOT generated by Flexi.

Thanks in advance!
 

Boudica

Back to "educational purposes"
Hi! I work mainly on Illustrator, but now do contour cut stickers on flexi and an HP 64 Cutter. Is there a way to take a pre-existing vector shape in flexi and give it contour cut properties? I ask because the Contour Cut filter on flexi gives way too many anchor points, and Flexi's Reduce Points feature is sub-par compared to Illustrator's Simplify feature. So far i can only do contour cut on preexisting shapes by giving it the Contour Cut filter with a 0.00 offset. I want the shapes i make in illustrator to be imported onto Flexi and just turned into Contour Cut lines, but as they are, NOT generated by Flexi.

Thanks in advance!
in Illy: duplicate your art layer, then lock the art layer. with your new layer, pull out the "path finder" and Unite all of the elements to get the outside shape. Set the fill for that to none, and set the stroke to a CutContour spot color.

How to set the spot color: make a new swatch, make it a SPOT COLOR. It can be any color really, as long as it's set as a spot color, and named CutContour.

You can use the path tool(s) to simplify it if it's got too many anchors.
 

SugarShadow.EXE

New Member
in Illy: duplicate your art layer, then lock the art layer. with your new layer, pull out the "path finder" and Unite all of the elements to get the outside shape. Set the fill for that to none, and set the stroke to a CutContour spot color.

How to set the spot color: make a new swatch, make it a SPOT COLOR. It can be any color really, as long as it's set as a spot color, and named CutContour.

You can use the path tool(s) to simplify it if it's got too many anchors.
tHank you! I'll check this soon, as it will definetly speed the process up.
Yes Illy's "Simplify..."option is perfect unlike Flexi's. I hope this works!
 

Drip Dry

New Member
Oh this works too! This is what i was looking for, thank you!
The easiest way is to select the vector shape you want to put the cutline on.
Pull down the effects menu ( not the arrange menu)
Select contour cut
A popup box will open. The defaults will be good for most but you can change things there if you need to
Click the checkmark
Once the cut is applied, when you select it, there will be a box with a dotted line around it and if you hover over it, it will countou
 
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