Cutter Settings
Make sure that your cutter is set up with the settings shown.
A guide on how to change the Force of the blade can be found Here
Document
Create a new document in Adobe Illustrator to the size you require (A4 in this demo)
Artwork
Place your artwork onto the A4 Sheet.
Crops
Before launching the software, make sure you download the A4 Crop Marks PDF which can be found Here
Check Silhouette Studio - Edition
You will need to make sure that you have Silhouette Studio - Business Edition installed before running the software.
To do this, a tutorial on how to Upgrade your licence can be found Here
Cut Path
Make a copy of your vector and change the colour to all black.
Navigate to:
Window > Stroke
and use the settings shown in the image.
Change the stroke colour to a unique colour (a colour not used anywhere else in the artwork)
Outline the Stroke
This can be done by navigating to:
Object > Path > Outline Stroke
Merge
Open Pathfinder:
and click the Merge button.Window> Pathfinder
Then:
1. de-select everything on the document
2. use the direct selection tool (white arrow) to click on the newly created stroke
3. navigate to "Select > Same > Fill Color" and press DELETE on your keyboard
Clean Up
Delete any excess bits on the page that you don't want to be cut.
Finishing Up
Place the colour artwork behind the black artwork.
Layers
Navigate to:
Your layers panel should look like this.Window > Layers
Splitting Layers
Drag the Cut Layer into the layer labelled Cut so it looks like this.
Exporting Files
Disable the "Cut" layer as shown and save the file as "Filename_Print"
Then disable the "Print "layer and re-enable the "Cut" layer and save the file as "Filename_Cut"
Artwork Ready
Your artwork is now ready.
You should now have two Files with Print and Cut at the end.
You can now print the "Print" file with the crops through Illustrator and can now open the "Cut" file in Silhouette Studio.
Note:
When importing the file in Studio, you will need to delete the Crops Created in Illustrator and enabled here as shown here.