Silhouette: How to weld (joining letters and numbers)

Joining or 'welding' letters, numbers and design elements in the Silhouette is one of the first things I learned to do when using my Silhouette.  Think of welding as linking all the letters together so they cut as one big word instead of individual letters.

Of course, you can weld more than just words and numbers, you can weld pieces of a design so they cut as one unit instead of individual pieces.   In today's lesson I'm going to show you the basics of welding and how you can use it for fonts ... then tomorrow we'll talk about welding design elements.

First up on the lesson plan: Welding letters.

Type a word into your work area.  If it's a script it may appear to be overlapping already.  This doesn't necessarily mean it's all one piece though.  If you see those little circles between the letters like in the below example it means they are overlapping, but not welded together.  

To weld the letters into one word highlight the entire design > right click > select Weld. 

Now your design should look like this....everything is welded together (except the period).

Let's talk numbers...

Okay type some numbers into the work area (this would be the same process for non script fonts, as well). When you do this your numbers are all grouped together even though they look like individual numbers.  You can tell they are grouped because when you click on the numbers a single large box appears around all of them.  To weld them, you need to move the numbers closer together so you first need to ungroup them.  Highlight all the numbers > Right click > ungroup.

Now that they are ungrouped you can physically move the numbers closer to each other by dragging the individual digits with you mouse.  I'm going to let this next graphic do the talking....

Here's what the welded 2014 looks like when it's cut.

Thanks for coming to class today at Silhouette School.  If you like what you see, I'd love for you to pin it!