qbert1953 0 Posted December 30, 2018 I am trying to layer letters over an image. I have tried every way imaginable to weld/combine both in illustrator and CUT and I am not able to accomplish this task. When I do somewhat get it to work it put the text behind the image even though I have told the software to move the text to the front and the image to the back. Any help or advice would be great! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
haumana 1,220 Posted December 30, 2018 are you willing to post your file? have you tried doing the merge/weld in separate steps? text first, then overlaying it on to the image. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qbert1953 0 Posted January 2, 2019 I believe I have. The file is attached 2018 Goldwing DCT Outline-1.vDoc Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MZ SKEETER 4,709 Posted January 2, 2019 That is not a vector file. What you posted takes me to Vinyl Master website. Picture below is what comes up when I click on that link. The file has to be a vector file. ending in like .eps .ai Export the file as an .eps file. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
haumana 1,220 Posted January 2, 2019 Are you wanting t cut this in 3-colors? Because if you are, I would recommend that you cut it as it is. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wildgoose 4,200 Posted January 3, 2019 .vdoc I think is a native VMaster file. I'll try opening when I get near my VM Pro version. qbert just looking at the screen shot you have some issues. Does VM Cut allow you to cut by color? For the text you should be able to cut by color if not then you would have to separate each color layer out and save as individual color files. As for the image you need to get it out of there because your cutter will always see the outline of the image and cut that line possibly in any color group. thirdly the outlines behind the letters or in Illustrator lingo the path offsets behind the letters are overlapping and will cut into each other exactly as the lines appear in your pic. You need to weld them together. Illustrator call this operation "Unite". I don't recommend using "Merge" because it will do some nasty things that you don't want. Another way to avoid this is to turn your text string into a compound path by selecting all the letters and Object>Compound Path>Make . If you do this before you do the path offset it will automatically connect all the background into one because a compound path is considered one object in AI. If you do the Merge option AI will leave un-filled paths in any open spot which your cutter will often cut a second time. Cut by color should avoid the unfilled paths but they are undesirable in any event. If you have made these within a file you can remove them by selecting one over in the layer stack on the right side and then use the select same fill color option and just delete them all but that's an unnecessary process and should be avoided by doing it right the first time when possible. Merge sounds like the thing you want to do and is fine for print or web but not for cutting. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wildgoose 4,200 Posted January 3, 2019 I opened the linked file and it's fine from what I can see. The unwelded background is all together which I didn't notice until a second look that your lower pic does show it welded. The color layers are all fine and should cut fine as separate colors as long as you can find the "Separate by Color" check box in the General tab once you send it to the cutter then choose the color you want to cut. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites