How to Make Designs Curve in Silhouette Studio: Meet the Conical Warp Tool

The Conical Warp tool is a feature introduced in Silhouette Studio V4.1 for users on Designer Edition Plus and Business Edition. It's extremely helpful when applying designs – text or graphics – on conical or curved surfaces such as tumblers, tubs, and other round objects.  

This is a sponsored post, but all opinions are my own.

The tool works to warp text and graphic designs to account for a curved surface. 

I'm working with a set of arrows from Craft Bundle's October Craft bundle.

The October bundle includes a whole lot more than this arrow set, as you can see above, but it's a perfect way to show you exactly how the conical warp tool works since arrows are straight.

If you were to cut these arrows as-is on vinyl and apply them to a tumbler or tapered glass they would not be straight. They would take on the slight curve of the conical surface and appear to bend.  That's the struggle Silhouette Studio users have faced until recently.

In previous version of the Silhouette design software it was only possible to curve text - not shapes.  Even when text was curved using Text to Path, the degree of the curve was pretty much a guessing game and could not be customized based on the exact size and shape of the surface. 

By using the Conical Warp tool, Silhouette Studio allows you to warp designs - in this case the arrows - based on the size and shape of the conical surface where the design will be applied.

To add a conical warp to a design, open the Warp tool from along the right tool bar. Click the Conical Warp tab.

Select the shape, text or design in the work area and click “Conical Warp Selected Shapes”. This will put a curved template around the selected object.

From the panel, enter the dimensions of the conical object where the decal will be placed. You can manually type in the dimensions or you can adjust the size of the surface by moving the blue, green and red nodules.

The design will automatically warp to account for the shape of the surface.  The severity of the surface shape and the size of the shape will determine how dramatically the shape is warped.  Now when you cut the design on vinyl and then put the vinyl on a tumbler, mug, or other conical surface it will appear to be straight because you have slightly warped the design to counter-act the curve. 

By the way, if you have multiple designs that need to be warped and they're all going on the same size and shape surface, you can select them all at the same time....

Click "Conical Warp Selected Shapes" and apply the same warp simultaneously.

Once you click 'Apply' the designs take on the warp. Designs closer to the bottom of the warp will take on a more severe curve, while those along the top will be the least affected.

Now that you know how to curve designs - and text - using the Silhouette Studio Conical Warp tool you can take full advantage of all of these awesome designs and fonts in the October Craft Bundle. But hurry because it will only stick around for a few weeks!

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