3 min read What's New

Kid’s Name Puzzle - SVG Generator

Kid’s Name Puzzle - SVG Generator

Hi everyone,

Here's the latest with Cuttle.

Kid’s Name Puzzle 🧩

name puzzle.jpeg

We released a new template and video tutorial for making a laser cut Name Puzzle.

Simply type a name and your SVG cut file is automatically generated, ready to download and cut!

name puzzle demo.gif

Federico recorded a video tutorial showing the whole process from start to finish, plus:

  • Glueing and painting tips
  • Recommendations on acrylic paint brands
  • How to find the “AP” logo which certifies that a paint is non-toxic and safe for kids
  • How to make puzzles with letters from other languages
name puzzle frames.jpeg

The Name Puzzle template is free for the next week! Then it will become a Cuttle Pro template. Enjoy!

How it was made 🧑‍💻

One of Cuttle’s most powerful features is that you can write your own custom modifiers in JavaScript.

We used this to make the “finger holds” on the Name Puzzle. With 12 lines of code, we determine the best spot to place the circular finger hold.

This enables the Name Puzzle to work with any font and even with foreign characters.

You can click “Edit in Cuttle” to see exactly how the template was made. Here’s an explanation for the finger hold placing algorithm:

finger-hold-algorithm.png

If you’re interested in exploring coding inside of Cuttle, check out our documentation on writing your own custom modifiers!

Mask Modifier - out of beta and new “invert” option 🎭

The Mask Modifier is out of beta!

Mask lets you take any shape and use it as the “mask” for some contents. Those contents can even be vectors. Unlike the mask or clipping features in other design tools, Cuttle’s Mask will export properly clipped vectors that will work on cutting and plotting machines.

Here’s Federico experimenting with a tight spiral masked by his logo, plotted on an Axidraw. Watch the short (1 min) video!

mask-plotter.jpeg

Also this week, we added an invertMask option. Normally, everything within the mask shape will remain. But by checking invertMask, everything outside the mask shape will remain.

invertMask.png

We ended up needing this feature ourselves for the finger holds on the Name Puzzle!

Power user feature: “Extract as Parameter” 🧞

We added a time-saving feature for those of you making parametric designs.

extract 2.gif

If you have a parameter on a shape that you’d like to “pull out” so that it’s a parameter on the component, you can now do that in one step with “Extract as Parameter”.

Other Improvements and Fixes 🐞

  • Fixed a bug that was causing the Cake Topper Generator to glitch. It was a bug with our intersection routines that we had updated with the Mask modifier. Thanks for the report Rob!
  • Fixed a bug that was breaking “Sign In with Google” and account creation on some browsers. Thanks for the report Vishruthh!
  • Fixed a bug where the evaluated value of a math expression or a number with a unit wasn’t updating in the inspector.
  • Some optimizations and fixes for SVG export.
Toby Schachman

Toby Schachman