cutting Cricut handbooks with SCA

[coolmom]

Okay I read and saved a post on the Cricut mb for a friend who has the Robocraft. I forgot about it and found it today and I want to know can we do that with SCA or with Inkscape and if so how. It was on 2-20-08 on the general mb and it said that if you have a Robocraft you can download the handbooks of the cartridges from the Cricut websight and then open the PDF file in a software called Design Masters (maybe some thing like inkscape?). Then you could transfer it and cut anything you want right from the pdf with SCA.

OH please tell me. Is it true???

[raewyn64]

You would be able to screen dump the image from the Cricut handbook into a programme like MS Paint, save it as jpg then open that in Inkscape, outline it in Inkscape then import it into SCAL and cut it.
Raewyn

[Lianne]

a screen save can also be done from design studio.....but shhh

[aperez]

well then

there goes cartridge profits for PC!

[CBJPL31]

well then

there goes cartridge profits for PC!

No way! Not for me anyway. I still like my CDS. It's alot easier than going through all that just to save, trace, resave, import...UGH! I'd just rather buy the cart and make it easy. lol I just purchased Pooh and Friends tonight. I'll certainly buy all the layer ones...the others I am unsure of at this point. Depends on how much I like on each cart. Won't buy it for one thing but if I like quite a few things would be worth it.

[Laurieinaz]

But when you do a screen save, you get the contents of the entire screen. How do you isolate the desired image?

[trmeyer]

Hello, I am new here, well I've been lurking, but bought the software last week. I haven't had a ton of time to play with it, but my schedule is getting thinner right now so I am excited. Well I have tried the screen shot, crop the thing I want, save as jpeg or bmp, open in inkscape. From there I set the view to outline, either trace it or I don't. Then save as .svg file. But when I get it into sca either it isn't there at all, just a box or if it is there, it is drawn so that around the outline there is double lines, so when I go to cut it, it cuts like a silohette (sp?). but it is so tiny space between that it can't cut it. Does this make sense? Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong? I have so many clip art things for scrapbooking that I would love to cut, but at this point I can't. I have cut a welded title with sca. I know it can cut on my cricut. I just would like to figure this out. Thanks for any help.

Tracy Meyer

[susibi]

If you are opening your file and the traced image isn't there try selecting it in Inkscape and doing Path>Object to path before saving as .svg. This sometimes helps.
The best images to trace are those with a solid outline; not everything is suitable for cutting so be critical before you trace.
If you get double lines it is probably because you have traced or saved a line drawing - Inkscape will trace both sides of the line thus the double cut lines. If this happens, go back to your svg in Inkscape, select all, Ungroup and delete the extra lines before saving as .svg.
Basically you can screen shot any image suitable for cutting from the net ; not only cartridge sample books, die cut sample images etc trace them, save as jpeg then go through Inkscape to make your .svg. But - it is illegal, you're contravening copyright so - it's definitely a question between you and your conscience and you certainly shouldn't share any of those images as cutting files on a public Forum! The quality of the finished images is also slightly inferior to the cuts you'll get from the original cartridge as with all the different steps you have to take there is some image loss.
Susibi

[raewyn64]

Thanks Susibi I meant to add that ther emight be a copyright issue with doing this.
Also I certainly would still use the carts from Cricut to cut things like Mickey and Friends etc which have many layers as it is all done for me in the cart.
Raewyn

[trmeyer]

Thank you for responding Susibi. I know what you mean about the copyright issues, and I would never post anything like that as a project. Thank you for explaining what I was missing, I kept forgetting the path part. Also it would be a pain in the you know what for doing that for everything. But I wouldn't mind doing it once or twice to see if the cartridge would get used. I am planning on buying the paper dolls one. That one looks soooooo awesome. But now I have to save up my pennies since I bought this program when I probably shouldn't have But I do have other scrapbooking clipart that I could use for myself. Can I post the project that I make, but not the file if I use something copyrighted, to show you guys what I did? I have several scrapbooking clipart cd's that would look cute if I could figure out how to do this. I may just have to go back to cutting them by hand tho if it is toooo complicated. But if I have a jpeg, I just have to open that in inkscape right? No screenshot stuff? Thanks for all the help!!!

Tracy