Exporting custom templates to SSDE (Win only)

While working on my tracing series, I was reminded just how hard it is to autotrace templates. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to trace them? I thought, and then it hit me. I went back to a 3 year old post here and found my answer. Here’s a video that shows the process for Windows (Mac solution and alternate Windows process here).

and here are the written steps:

-Install PDF creator (free) if you have not already. Download link here

-Open or generate your printable *vector* content. (see list of suggested sources in this post)

We used Ideogram’s free online template maker for the video

-Press the print button or select print from the file menu

-Choose PDF Creator from the dropdown list of printers and click Print. (don’t worry, it isn’t really going to print)

-Name the file in the top box and click the Save button at the bottom right.

-Choose a location for your for file, choose SVG from the pull down list of file types at the bottom of the window, and click Save.

-Open a new document in SSDE and choose File>Merge, set files of type to SVG or All files then navigate to the SVG file you just saved and click OK.

-If nothing is visible on the mat, click control-A to select all and look for a bounding box. Set the line color to black.

-Select all and set line width to zero (any line widths greater than zero in an SVG will double cut)

-On the Cut Styles Pane click Cut Edge. If no lines turn red, click the ungroup button one or more times and try again.

-In order to dash or separate score lines, ungroup the file and change the lines styles as desired.

This process maintains the proper size for ideogram’s templates (in PC Creator, your default ppi under Options>SVG should be set to 72) but it’s a good idea to verify size for anything that needs to be exact before you cut.
Tip:If the file is too big, try a reduction of 80% as this is another common standard.

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