SURE CUTS A LOT
Version tested: 6.062 (This guide applies to versions 4, 5, and 6)
Operating system tested: PC
Tested: 13 December 2024 / Missy Meyer
Cost: Regular $80.00 USD (often discounted to $60) / PRO $249.00 USD (often discounted to $199)
Where to get it: https://craftedge.com/download/downloads.php
Demo version: Yes
Font file types to use: TTF/OTF double stroke; OPF single stroke
Image file types to use: SVG
How to See & Use the Fonts (TTF/OTF Double Stroke)
First, make sure that the font is installed on your computer or device. Check the “Install fonts on [operating system]” software guides for more information.
Open up the TEXT panel by clicking on the “AA” icon on the right side of the screen. Then add text to your artboard by clicking on the Type Tool – the letter T icon on the left menu – and clicking on your artboard. You can then type out your word or phrase.
SCAL will start you out with its default font. For PC users, it will most likely be Arial.
You can now change the font to whatever other one you like. For this example, I’ll be using Spicy Sketcher. Use the main selection tool (the black arrow on the left menu) to click on your typed text so that it’s one big selected box as shown. Then in the drop-down list of fonts on the right in the TEXT panel, you can choose Spicy Sketcher 2, the double stroke version.
Once your text is all typed, you can convert it to vector shapes so that you can rearrange, rotate, or modify the letters. This step is also necessary to export your design as an SVG file.
With your typed text selected, go to Text > Convert Text to Outlines from the top menu.
Now you’ll want to separate the letters into individual objects. With your text selected, go to Object > Ungroup from the top menu, or use the Ctrl+Shift+G shortcut to ungroup the letters.
With each letter separated out as an individual vector object, they can be resized, rearranged, rotated, and otherwise moved around to create your design.
If the default line weight is a little light, and you’d like the strokes to be a little heavier and easier to see (if, for example, you have old eyes like me), you can change that! Click on the painter’s palette icon in the right menu to get the FILL & STROKE panel. There, you can change the width of the stroke to be as heavy as you like.
You can now save your design as an SVG file. To do so, go to File > Export from the top menu, or use the Ctrl+Shift+E shortcut.
An explorer window will pop up; navigate to where you’d like to save your file, give it a name, and then click the Save button in the bottom right of that window. SCAL’s default export file type is SVG. There are other file types to choose from, including FCM if you plan on uploading the design into Brother CanvasWorkspace, but SVG is likely what you’ll want to use here.
How to See & Use the Fonts (OPF Single Stroke)
Instead of installing a font the “regular” way, SCAL has a different method for OPF fonts.
Go to your Documents folder, then navigate to Documents > Craft Edge > My Fonts. Move a copy of the OPF file into that folder. The next time you open up Sure Cuts a Lot, any OPF fonts you’ve put in this folder will load in and be a part of your fonts list.
They can be selected the same way you’d select outline fonts or double stroke OTF/TTF fonts. The one weird thing is that it won’t show you a preview of what the font looks like; the preview “abcdeABCDE” text will just show up in the default font (in my case, Arial).
But when you type with that font using the Type Tool, it shows exactly as it should.
Just like with the double stroke version, you’ll want to turn this text into vector shapes before saving it to an SVG file. Go to Text > Convert Text to Outlines in the top menu.
And from there, go to Object > Ungroup from the top menu, or use the Ctrl+Shift+G shortcut, to separate the letters into individual objects. Now each letter can be moved, resized, or otherwise adjusted.
You can then save your design as an SVG file using the same File > Export method as shown above.
How to Access Alternates, Ligatures, and Extended Character Sets
SCAL has its own built in character grid, which can be accessed through the Library icon along the top.
Depending on the type of font you use, this is a great easy way to add in alternates, ligatures, and other bonus characters!
In the Library grid, click onto the Fonts tab. (It will start you by default on the Shapes tab.) Here you can choose any font you like, and you get a clear, easily readable grid of all of the characters in that font.
You can even make the grid larger to make the characters even easier to see, by sliding this bar along the bottom. Here I have the little blue slider nub all the way over to the right, so you can see the largest grid size.
However! If you’re looking at an OPF font, and scroll to the bottom of this grid, it stops before it shows you all of the characters. I believe that SCAL will only show a selected set of characters, including the Basic Latin set, Latin-1 Supplement, and part of the General Punctuation set, specifically when you’re using an OPF font.
Here you can see that the Library grid (right) stops at the per thousand character; I’ve opened up the character grid in MainType on the left here and selected the per thousand character to show that there are 231 alternates, ligatures, and other characters beyond that point that SCAL is just not showing.
The workaround is pretty easy, though! You can use the double stroke OTF or TTF version of the font to grab all of those extras for your design. Here’s the Library character grid for Dear Agatha 2, the double stroke version. As you can see, it includes all of the extended language accented characters, ligatures, alternates, and other goodies down at the bottom of the list. You can just single-click on each one to add it to the text you’re typing.
When you’re done, you can then select the entire text and change the font over to the OPF option to get your design in the single stroke version. Easy!
Alternately, you can copy and paste the ligatures, alternates, or other extras in from another source. Here I’ve copied this fancy lowercase L in MainType, and then pasted it in to my design.
Once your design is complete, be sure to convert your text to outlines (Text > Convert Text to Outlines on the top menu) if you’d like to save it as an SVG or other vector file.
How to Use SVG or Other Alphabet Sets
Some folks may find it easier to just have an entire page with all of the characters of a font, where they can choose the ones they want and rearrange them however they wish. If a font comes with a file that contains the full character set, you can easily use it in SCAL!
Go to File > Import in the top menu.
Navigate to the SVG file that contains the alphabet. Click on it once to select it, then click the Open button.
This will open up the file on your workspace. If the lines of the letters are too thin, you can always go to that FILL & STROKE menu by clicking on the paint palette icon on the right, and adjusting the width of the strokes.
Click on each letter you’d like to use, then drag it over to the side. You can even drag them into the yellow space beyond the mat. Once you have all of the letters you’d like to use, you can drag your cursor around the remaining letters and delete them from the mat.
And then, as usual, you can resize, rearrange, rotate, and otherwise modify the letters to create your design.
No need to convert these to vector outlines; they’re already vector shapes! As soon as you’re done, you can immediately go to File > Export and save your design as an SVG or other file type.
If this program has been updated since this test and this guide no longer works, please drop me a line at the contact form so I can update this page!