Designing for the Silhouette Cameo Vinyl  Cutter

The Silhouette Cameo is a basic electronic cutting machine. It can cut a wide variety of materials including paper, vinyl, cardstock, fabric, heat transfer material, and more. The Library will supply a limited amount of vinyl and paper. Users may bring in their own materials to use with the Cameo.

Designing

We recommend using Silhouette Studio software to create designs for the Cameo.

Designs must fit within the range of the material type being used. This must be communicated to the machine in the Cut Settings and Print Page Setup in the Silhouette Studio software. Common types include:

• Vinyl - 12” x 12” or 12” x 6”
• Computer paper - 8.5” x 11”
• Cardstock - 8.5” x 11”

Silhouette Studio

When designing in Silhouette Studio, the software automatically recognizes the cut lines, which are the border lines of objects or text. These lines are displayed in red. This is the most straightforward, though slightly limiting process. You can create a design using Silhoutte Studio features, which include a freehand drawing tool as well as premade shapes and text. You can also import image files like .svg, .jpeg and .png and use the Trace tool. Images with backgrounds can use the Trace and Detach tool.

Silhouette Studio software is great for lettering or text designs. All fonts on your tablet or laptop are available in the software. You may also download free fonts and add them to the font library. Outer lines of typed text will automatically be recognized as cut lines for the vinyl cutter.