Craft Edge

Hello! I am new to SCAL and have downloaded the trial version today. I am hoping to make the purchase online this evening to download the full version, but have a few questions first.

• When cutting shapes/dingbats do you cut all pieces and then put together in "layers"? I don't see an option to cut certain pieces (or layers) separately like you can when using the Cricut carts by themselves.
  I see there are many shared files here, which is awesome I have downloaded a few but can not get them to open in the SCAL program. I'm assuming they do not have the same extension. Can someone help me with this?
  I'd love to create word books and hope to be able to file already created files for ones I want or be able to find a tutorial for creating them.
  Is Inkscape a must for this program? I had a Silhouette and used Inkscape with that, very little, but was overwhelmed.

thansk so much for your help!
Deb

I'm fairly new too, but LOVE this program. I haven't done much in inkscape, but http://susanbluerobot.blogspot.com/ has LOTS and LOTS of lessons on her blog.
I haven't found a place to do layers, I just cut the picture out twice and then layer what I need, so far it has worked for me.
As for the different files, you can either open an .scut file or use the import svg file option.
Hope this helps a little!

There are no layers in SCAL - yet (we hope!). What I have done with the SVG files I uploaded is separate all of the layers in Inkscape, and thrown out some of the layers that don't add anything to the finished product. Then, the separated layers can be imported into SCAL. Near the end of my uploads, I started separating some of the files so that they could readily be imported into SCAL. Others are left such that you need to separate them. If you need help with any of the files, let me know and I'll separate it for you.

I haven't really figured out how to trace things and separate them in Inkscape - I played with it a little, but didn't get anything to work. I need to work through some of the tutorials to learn it.