Craft Edge

Hi all. I am going to be purchasing SCAL soon (possibly today even) and I was wondering if anyone has used Illustrator to create svg files and if they work with SCAL? I work with Illustrator for my graphic design business and am already familiar with it.

I was reading through the forums and saw that some users have had issues with using SCAL on Macs. Has anyone successfully been able to run SCAL on the mac? I can always boot up into the windows partition if I have to, but would much prefer to stay on the Mac side of things.

Thanks!

I can't answer that for you, I have only used Inkscape because I was told to.

Hey fellow Mac,

I've been running SCAL in native mode on my Mac since March with no problems except to update the firmware on the cricut since it does not support Macs. There are many posts on how to get your cricut update firmware.

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements so have no info about Illustrator. I also use Inkscape a vector graphics program that is a free download and works on Mac. Lots of info about Inkscape here too. If you can create a jgp in Illustrator you can import it into Inkscape and the resulting svg file can be read by SCAL.

If I haven't sufficiently answered you questions, you can respond to this or just email me.

Welcome to the board.

Susan

Thanks Susan. I've already updated the firmware on the Cricut so I am good to go there.

Illustrator is a vector program that can save files directly as svg. I'm thinking that it should work. As far as I know an svg file is an svg file, no matter what the program is. I have no experience with Inkscape so I didn't know if Inkscape had a special process that the files had to be saved as in order to make it work or not. I guess I will just try it and see. It's no big deal if it doesn't work..I'll just download Inkscape. I have a lot of vector files that would be so cool to use.

My guess would be an svg file is an svg file. Nothing to lose to try it. Let us know.

I have an iMac G5 (pre-Intel) and I've been running SCAL successfully since it first came out. Like others, my only issue was in updating the Cricut firmware - which I did successfully by borrowing a PC to install the trial version of Design Studio, update the firmware, then uninstalled the software.

I don't have experience with Illustrator, but I have been using Inkscape to both create .svg files and to successfully convert Illustrator files (.ai) to .svg files.

If you are comfortable with Illustrator I don't see there being a problem creating .svg files from your mac then importing them into SCAL.

Hope this helps!
Diana

I don't use a mac but I use Adobe Illustrator to create and convert images to .svg it's all a matter of you saving it as an .svg file, just look in your pull down menu once you click save as

Hello!
I'm new in this forum and Im so impressed with all you can create with SCAL!! My question is the same. I already have SCAL installed on my Mac and I have Illustrator CS. I save my file in .svg but when imported in SCAL all I have is the red box with nothing inside. Maybe Its something about the options when saving or I need to do something else with the image before saving it in svg. Does anyone knows a SCAL + Illustrator tutorial ? I'll really appreciate any help!

I don't use Illustrator only Inkscape. In INK, you have to trace the bitmap to make it a vector file...maybe that is the same situation in Ill. If you don't trace the bitmap in INK, you will end up with an empty box when opened in SCAL.

HTH

If you can make an SVG file from Illustrator, I'm sure you can import it into SCAL. (Use the IMPORT option, not open.) Note that if your SVG file has layers, your image may cut funny, so it would be best to separate the layers first, and remove those not needed for to the cut product. If you can do all of that in Illustrator, then you do not need Inkscape. You might have to play with the arrangement of the pieces to cut. All pieces will come over as one graphic file, meaning that once it is in SCAL, you cannot move them around and they might change position after importing (don't ask why, they just do! ). It is hard to make separate files and scale them to fit for different pieces in SCAL, so in general they should be in the same file. (We're hoping for layers in a future update!) I did a graphic pieced in separate files because I wanted it larger than would fit for the baby bug. The end result was ok, but I had to nip and tuck a fair amount. HTH