Tips, Tricks and Common Mistakes

This page takes you through some useful tips that will make your results cleaner and give your job a higher chance of success.

Create Score Lines

When setting up your file for card cutting, it is important to consider the edges of your geometry, as sharp corners and the end of lines can often be torn by the card cutter. A simple way of avoiding this is to insert short score lines along the cut line.

How to create score lines

Draw a curve perpendicular to your selected line, offset this 1mm. Select both of the perpendicular curves, use the command array-curve to populate these around your selected line. Set the distance between the arrayed elements as far apart, or close together as works for your geometry (eg. 50mm), hit enter. Now use the split command to split the curve into segments, select the small curve segments and place on the score layer.

Use Labels

Its a good idea to label your pieces, its up to you where you want to place these labels inside of the geometry you're cutting, or off to the side (as is pictured above). Labels allow for ease of construction once you've processed your job, and help with trying to work out which piece goes where!

Use the Rhino text command to create these labels, once you have them use the command seltext to select all of the text in your file and run explode to make them into vector curves that the Card Cutter will be able to read.