Warning: Reminder to Mirror HTV in Silhouette Studio May Cause Mis-Cuts

In case you didn't notice, Silhouette Studio gives you a prompt to mirror your design when any of the heat transfer vinyl materials (or sometimes non htv materials) have been selected in the Send panel.

The problem is...it can cause your design to mis-cut if you aren't aware of one very important thing!
In response to repeated requests from Silhouette crafters, Silhouette America's software team added a mirror reminder prompt to the software when any Heat Transfer Vinyl is selected as the material type.

Here's how hit works: when you select any of the "Heat Transfer Vinyl" material types from the material list in the Send panel, you'll get a prompt to mirror your design after clicking the "Send" button.  If you have already mirrored your design, you can click "Send As-Is" and go about cutting.

But if you have forgotten to mirror, or you just don't want to change the orientation of your design, you can click the option to "Send Mirrored."

The prompt itself is the good part...the bad part is the way the software responds. According to the pop up you'd want to pick Send Mirrored "to send the design mirrored" when cutting.  The word "design" is where the problem starts.

Most crafters would assume, by the wording in the prompt that the "design" will be mirrored, that this is how it would cut...

The problem is that's not actually what happens....instead the page is mirrored, not the design.

While the preview screen in Silhouette Studio does not change to show you the new placement of the cut, this visualization gives you an idea of how the whale would cut when "Send Mirrored" is selected.

If you have a full sheet of HTV it's likely not a big deal. BUT...if you have a design in the upper left corner and a piece of HTV covering the same grid boxes (indicated by the gray shaded area below), you will end up missing the HTV.

Instead of the design mirroring or flipping, as the description states - and as most would expect - the entire page flips which puts the design in the upper right corner when it cuts.

So while the prompt to mirror the design is helpful if you've forgotten to mirror your design, the "fix" actually causes another "issue" which could very likely end up with the same result: wasted heat transfer vinyl.

I mean let's be honest if I can remember that my design will not cut where it's shown in the preview screen, then I can probably remember to mirror it myself manually.


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