Installing Cricut Craft Room

Cricut Craft Room has been officially launched and is now open for everyone. Here are the steps you need to go through to install the program.

(Note - Other than the first two pictures, these instructions were written before the most recent CCR update. If they're not exactly right, they should be close. I'll be going through and updating as soon as I can).

Go to http://www.cricut.com/craftroom/default.html 

To install the Desktop (cutting) version click on either the PC or MAC button (depending on what system you use).

(The instructions from here are for the PC installation)

• Click the Save File button

• Select a destination for the download file and click Open. (I created a sub-directory in my Downloads directory called Cricut Craft Room and save the file there.)

 

When the installation file has download you may see this box.

• Double click on the Cricut-Craftroom.exe file to start the installation.

If you don't see the above box navigate to the location you saved the installation file to and run it from there.

• Select Run

• Press the Continue button

• Click Yes

 The program will commence its installation.

• Once CCR is installed the login screen will appear. Complete the login details and press the Log In button.

• Once you have read the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) click the I Agree button. (If you do not agree to the EULA press Cancel to terminate the installation)

The next step is to select your Cricut machine. (You can change which machine you are using at any time.)

• Click on your machine then press the Continue button

At the next screen you can add Bookmarks for the cartridges that you own. You don't have to bookmark your carts to cut with them nor does this link your carts to your Craft Room a/c. It is simply a way to make it quicker to select your carts from the library when you are designing.

• Click on the carts that you own and press Continue when you are finished. (Use the scroll bar on the right to scroll to the bottom of the list). You can add or remove carts from this list at any time.

And that's it! The next screen you will see is the Start a new Project Screen. Give your new project a name and press the Start button.

Happy designing!!!!

Grouping objects

When you want to make changes to multiple objects on your mat at the same time there are two options.

1.     You can select your objects by placing a selection box around them and make your changes. While the objects can all be changed at the same time, they are still individual objects. When you click elsewhere on the mat your objects will no longer be grouped.

2.    The second way is to again select your objects by placing a selection box around them, then click the Group button. Now when you click off the object it stays grouped. Grouping just makes it easier to change multiple objects at one time. 

You may notice when you group a set of objects that the Weld/Don't Weld buttons disappear and are replaced by the Edit Group button.

When you click on the Edit Group button you can make changes to the individual parts of the group. (For example you may want to flip or rotate one of the objects. When you've finished making your changes click on the Exit button to return to the CCR mat.

To ungroup your selection just click anywhere inside the group and click the Ungroup button from the toolbar.

A buggy bit: A shout out to RockinRenee from the Cricut message board who found a bug when she was using the grouping feature on her project. Here's the deal...


If you flood fill your images with different colours using the Imagine colour palette then group them, they will most likely all take on the colour of your base image. 


The way to get around this is to place your images on the mat, group them then click on the Edit group button. You'll then be able to select each image and colour it. When you have finished press the Exit button to return to your mat.

Got a question on Grouping or any other part of CCR? Just let us know!

Welding - the basics

Welding and Grouping in CCR is easy peasy!

• Place your first object on the mat.

• Place your next object on the mat.

• Move the second object so it's overlapping the first one at the point where you want the two to weld

As soon as your objects touch each other and you release the mouse you'll see the Weld/Don't Weld buttons appear. The point at which they are welded will be greyed out. 

The Weld button is the default so at this point there is nothing more you need to do! (I told you it was easy.....)

You can continue to add objects to the mat and weld them in the same way. You can weld together objects from any cartridge.

To get a better idea of how your finished project will look you can turn on Fill Mode.

• Select the Options menu and place a check mark in the Fill Mode Enabled box

Your objects will be filled with that layers colour.

And that, in a nutshell is Welding! :)

Build 59 causing Imagine layering problems

If you're having trouble getting the layering method to work it's not something you're doing wrong. The problem started when Build 59 was released last week. Currently all the layers are cutting separately again. Insert unhappy face here!

I'm still trying to figure out if there's still a way to print and cut all the layers as one and will post if and when I do!

More on Printing and Cutting layers with the Imagine

In this post I showed you how to group together all the layers from an image so you can print and cut the entire object.

http://cricutcraftroomblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/printing-and-cutting-disney-layers-on.html

Today I want to show you how to take that one step further, using the Hide Contour feature.

Many of the layers on the carts are made up of more than one shape. For example the Pluto image on the Mickey Font cart has a collar that doesn't align correctly because it is made up of 3 separate parts. The part on the left doesn't align properly with the other layers of the object.

This is how it looks not aligned properly beside how it should look:

  

Now, let me show you how to achieve that using a second copy of the collar and the Hide Contour feature.

Place all the parts of Pluto except for the collar on the mat and align them correctly on top of each other.

Don't forget to select Don't Weld on each of the layers. I just picked any old colour from the colour palette for this example.

Place two copies of the collar on the mat. You can colour them now or later when you place the object on top of the other layers. I've coloured them here so it's easier to see.

Note: Don't use Copy and Paste to create your second copy of the object. Pasted objects don't work well with the Hide Contour feature. Quite often the whole object will be hidden instead of just the contour you are clicking on. 

We only need two copies of the collar because it is only the left hand part that doesn't align. The two right hand parts are in their correct positions and don't need to be separated.

Select the first collar and click the Hide Contour button

Hover your mouse over the left hand piece of the image and click to hide it.

Press the Exit button to return to the main screen.

Your image will look like this:

Select the 2nd copy of the collar and click the Hide Contour button

This time hide the two right hand side pieces

Select Exit to return to the mat.

That piece will now look like this:

To two pieces together will look like this:

Select the larger piece and move it over and align it

Select the other piece and move it over and align it.

And you're done!

So, that was an easy one to do because we only needed to hide two parts of a layer.

You'll find that many of the images on the carts will have layers that are made up of numerous parts. For example Boo(1) from the Best of Pixar cart has five parts to her face, arms and legs, three parts to her hair, five parts to her boots, smile and eyes and two parts to her pants. That's a lot of layers to duplicate and contours to hide!

And because there's no Blackout feature on this cart and I didn't want to use the Shadow for the background I hid all the inside contours of the Base image too. (Zoom is your best friend when doing this).

  

And here she is put together.

Here's another one. This is Dash from the Best of Pixar and it was a marathon effort.

Please ignore his pink eyes. I forgot to change them back to white before I printed him!

New CCR Build being released - hopefully this week

It's great to see Mallory from PC posting info about CCR in the CCR forum on the messageboard. If you haven't seen her posts check them out here: http://community.provocraft.com/Cricut-Community_postst85232_Cricut-Craft-Room-Beta-Updates.aspx

Mallory posted this a couple of ours ago about the next build to be released:

"WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE NEXT BUILD

We are working on a new build of Craft Room that should be ready for our beta testers to try out soon (hopefully this week but still TBD)! When it is available, Craft Room will ask you to install the update when you launch the desktop application. Here are some of the things you may notice with this new build.

- Restored automatic prompt for firmware updates on Personal Cutters, Creates, and Expressions.

- Resolved cartridge detection issues with Snapshot Nature and Snapshot Texture cartridges

- Improved printing and cutting with Cricut Imagine

- Fixed issue with the horizontal lines along the right edge of a pattern fill

- No more having to ungroup the layers of Imagine art to get the layers to cut correctly.

- Improvements to the “Layers” dropdown menu in the Cut Preview screen

- Improved Gypsy exporting and importing for 6"x12" projects

- And MORE!
After this build is available and you have updated your Craft Room, try out some things you’ve been having problems with and see if anything has changed for you. If you are still having problems, send us a note via Feedback."

I'm looking forward to testing it out!