Let’s talk about text – the Text Style Panel!
Silhouette Studio software will pull in any font that you have installed on your computer. Once it’s installed, a text style name should show up in the Text Style Panel.
Let’s take a look.
- Text Search bar – The name of the font that is selected will appear in this box or you can highlight it and type a name in the box and it will select that font.
- Text Size – Use the drop down box to change the text size smaller or larger here or highlight and type in a new number to change the pt size.
- Text Style Panel – The first 2 sections to appear in the Panel are the “Frequently Used” and “Recently Used” sections. You may have other sections in the Panel because you’ve created folders in your Fonts folder in the Silhouette cloud library. When you choose a font style for your text, the font style name will be highlighted.
- Text Properties – If a font has the options, choose Bold, Italic or Underlined here. Some text styles may have additional options available and the drop down box next to U will be available to select.
- Text Alignment – Choose your text to be align left (default), align centered, align right or Full.
- Horizontal/Vertical Text – Choose whether your text runs horizontally or vertically on your design mat.
- Line Spacing – Increase or decrease the space between each line of text. This will affect text created in the same text box.
- Character Spacing – Increase or decrease the spacing between each character. This can come in handy when you are trying to weld something and the letters do not overlap.
- Kerning – This feature adjusts the spacing between letters to make them look better, such as AW or AV. Instead of having such a wide space between then, you can turn the Kern on and they move closer together.
Now, let’s talk a little about how to create with Text.
First click on the Text Tool on the left side of the Silhouette Software. Click on the design mat & type out the words. Click off of the words to deselect it and then click back on the text once to select it. Fill the text with color to make it easier to see & work with. Click on the Text Style Panel on the right side.
Now, click on a Font Style Name, the text will change to that font style. You can then either click on each font, use the text search bar if you know what you are looking for or use the arrow keys to scroll through the text list and as you do the words will change to each font – this is my favorite method if I don’t know what font I want.
You will notice that I have red lines still going through my letters. Because my letters are overlapping, I want to weld this before I cut so that it will cut anything part that overlaps as one piece. Right click on the design and choose Weld.
This will change the text from editable text to a vector image, so you might want to make a copy and pull it off your mat before welding. Once it’s welded, you will see that any piece that was not overlapping will have now become it’s own separate section with a bounding box around it.
To keep the pieces together, we want to Group.
There are several ways to Group – right click & choose Group, Ctrl (Cmd) + G, Object tab at top & Group or use the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar) at the top and select the Group icon.
And now your font is ready to cut.
I hope that helps to explain the different parts of the Text Style Panel and how to create text designs.
If you want to learn even more about text and how to get accurate text sizes, check out my guest post on Silhouette School’s blog about Forcing Accurate Text Size.
Check out the other posts in the Let’s Explore v4 Series HERE.
Enjoy !
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My software gave me the notice that “No Calibration Profile could be found….” and I tried to create a calibration file, but was unable to. I have an iphone 6s and it was not recognizing that, but I’ve still been able to get successful cuts even with this notice. This may not work for everyone.
I see a few things are a bit off such as the Toscana Vigneto circle is not quite centered and the coffee stamps are a tad off….. but, all the others cut exactly how they showed on my screen.
Keep in mind that changing the line style also changes how it will cut. If you have a dashed line, that is exactly what it will cut. This works good if you are trying to make a score line for a card or template, but it doesn’t work well to cut a design out.
The photo above has the Line Style Position in front of the design.
And this photo shows the Line Style Position behind the design.
And here is my printed page:
This is an awesome feature as you don’t have to change the line thickness to get a design to print unless that is the look you want.
Now in the photo below, I have chosen Cutting Mat ‘None’ and I want to point out a few differences. You will see that the Cut border (red line) starts immediately at the top of the page. If your design is right at the top of the design mat, when you load your vinyl, it will begin cutting exactly where you have placed it on your screen.
Also note, the Cut border on the left & right side. You lose about 1/4″ of cuttable space on both sides of your vinyl when you cut with no mat. This is the allowance that the machine needs to grip the vinyl in the machine. And you will see the Cut border end approximately 1″ from the back end of the page size, this is again cuttable space that is lost so the machine can hold that vinyl in the machine to finish the cut.
While you can cut without a mat, I personally prefer to use my mat any time that my material will fit on it. It provides stability and there is less that can go wrong, such as your vinyl sliding.Now, if you do decide to cut without a mat, I would strongly suggest investing in a roll feeder. I just used this for a large cut job and it worked beautifully and I did not have to babysit it as much as without.
Here is what that looks like:
You can find the Silhouette roll feeder 
