Are you ever overwhelmed when you look at all the options in the version 4 Send area of the Silhouette Studio software? It can be intimidating, especially for a beginner. I’ve created this series of tutorials to give you ALL the information you need. I’ll walk you through each area slowly and completely so you feel confident in knowing how to use each one. Even if you’re a veteran Silhouetter, I’ll bet you learn something new.
There’s quite a bit of information in these lessons because there are many things that live in the Send area. You’ll want to think of the tutorials as an encyclopedia, not a short story. Use what you need for now and bookmark the pages for future reference. We’ll start with a very general overview.
Note: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I receive a small commission. You pay the same price. This helps me to be able to keep my business going and provide more tutorials. I will always be honest about my opinion of any product.
Where to Start
In the upper right of your software are tabs to navigate to the 4 general areas. The one farthest to the right is called “Send.” This is where you’ll tell the software and machine how to cut and what tools to use.
The Send Area
The Send AreaWhen you first open the Send area, there may be a slight delay while the software gets things ready for you to look at. Be patient.
No matter how far you are zoomed in on your Design area, when you open the Send area the software will show your entire defined page size. The familiar zoom tools are still there at the upper left that you can use.
You can do some actions in the Send area, but not all. For example, you can move your designs around. That makes sense, because you often need to do that when you’re ready to cut. Actions happen slowly here, so you don’t want to do a ton. But sometimes you will need that zoom to help you see better.
On the left
Once you enter the Send area, on the left you see your design in Cut View (also called Cut Preview). It tells you what is going to cut (or not cut) and how it is going to cut if you send the job to the machine right now. The color and strength of the line of any image tell you exactly what’s going to happen to that shape when you send the cut job to the machine. It’s extremely helpful to learn to read the cut preview (yep — I’ll show you how in this series).
If you have Business Edition, you can choose Media Layout View in the in the upper left icon bar…
… or by selecting “Business Mode On/Off” in the View drop down menu. Those still show as well.
On the right
The right side of the screen is where you make choices for what will cut and how it cuts. Here you–
- select and edit your cut mode, cut style and material settings
- select your tools and tool holders
- choose actions
- see which machines are connected
- perform test cuts
- set up Bluetooth
- do manual registration mark reading for print and cut
- use bar codes for print and cut (Business Edition only)
- calibrate for print and cut
- set advanced cutting preferences
- start a cut job
Don’t worry — in this series we’ll go through what each of those means.
If your machine has 2 tool holders (Cameo 3 and Curio), you’ll see a section for each one. Notice in my pic there’s a area for Tool 1 (red) and Tool 2 (blue). It’s important that you make your selections for your designs in the correct section so the machine knows which tool you want to use for each one. It’s also important to understand the difference between selecting the tool holder and selecting the specific tool to use in that holder.
Up Next
In the next tutorial in this series, we’ll discuss what the first cut mode — Action by: Simple — is all about.
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