 Did you ever want to know how to make a laser cut file? We just did a step-by-step tutorial in Adobe Illustrator and we'll show you how we did it right now. What is up? Welcome back. Do like to do it, build it or make it. So do we. And we have a new video each week. This week I'm coaching Kim on some creativity. Yeah, you'll see there's nothing on our table here. Nothing up my sleeves either. That's because we know we have a lot of new Glowforge users out there and I'm not sure that everyone including myself knows how to create their own SVGs and do their own cut files. So we thought we would do something a little bit different this week and do a step-by-step tutorial in Adobe Illustrator and show you how we create a cut file while I'll be doing it. Garrett will be coaching me a cut file from start to finish. Step-by-step like no editing. It'll be like real time and we'll cut it out using the Glowforge. Okay, here we are in Adobe Illustrator. We're going to start with a template. So let me open my template and I'll explain to you why we're using a template. So this template already has the basic red, yellow, green, blue. Yeah, basic colors that Glowforge uses for layers. So that's this color swatches up here. It's going to use real red, real blue, real green and so you know which are your cut lines and which are your score lines. So I'm starting from a template simply so I'll have those colors. All right, I plan to do a monogram door around today. So we're going to start with an 18 inch by 18 artboard which is what this is and I guess we're going to start with our backer, right? Yeah, start with the backer. Okay, over here in our shapes tool, our rectangle tool, I'm going to right click and say ellipse so I can draw a circle. I'm going to hold the shift key and draw my circle. It cancels the back to my selection tool. I'll center my circle. I'm going to put no fill here. It's only filled because I just clicked on red and then I'm going to change the size of my circle over here in the right hand side under our properties. I'm going to change this to 18. I'm going to lock it and make sure the dimensions are consistent. 18. All right and now we're going to use our menu bar up here. We're going to align on center horizontally and vertically. All right, so we have our backer. The next thing we're going to do is create our ribbon holes. So here I'm going to go back to my shapes tool, right click and we're going to do rounded rectangle. We have a standard size we use and that is 1.125 and then you get a deselect the constraints. Oh, we're going to unlock it. Okay, so 1.125 and then it's 0.125. So 1.125, is that right? Yeah, yep, that's right. So I'm going to go back to my selection tool over here. I'm going to duplicate this. So I'm going to do a Ctrl C, Ctrl V. Pro tip, click off of it. Uh-huh. Now just grab it and move it all in one place. Nope, don't click it and grab it and move it. Nope, you can't highlight it. Yeah, uh-huh. Ctrl Z. Nope, you can't click and go, you guess guy. If you can grab it and go, it's the best way to do it. All right, so I'm going to click and when I left, I'm going to use my left mouse button. Press and hold. Hold on. I'm going to click and hold my left mouse button so I can select both of them and then I'm going to align on bottom so that they're even with one another. Well, I guess I don't need to do that yet because basically- Well, if you hold shift now, it'll stay on that line. Oh, okay. So Ctrl Z. Okay. Now if you grab it and move it, grab it and start to move it and then hold shift. So it'll stay right on that. Oh, oh, fun. Now you select both. Uh-huh. Left click. Hold. Group those. Group. And center. Center. Yep. All right. That's the exact those we need to be, right? Yeah, that's it. Okay, so do I need to group the whole thing or are we just going to go to a new layer? I would say make a new layer, just create a new layer. Okay, over here on my layers menu, I'm going to add a little plus sign, create a new layer. I would lock that backer too so you don't move it around here. I'm going to press the lock button right here. Now we can't mess up what we've done on this layer and our backer. Now I need to- What do I do to select this layer? It's highlighted. It's selected. You're good. You're there. Yeah. So close this. Now we can start to build our monogram. Yeah. All right. I'm going to use my, what tool is this? Type tool. And you know what you don't do. I'll teach you guys something. Every time I did the type tool, I would draw this box and it was a mess and Garrett said no, that's not how you do it. Create the paragraph. Yes. And we don't want to do that. So you're going to do this and then you're going to select your type tool and just click in here. So you have one little box of text and I'm going to go ahead and I'll start with the monogram first. So I'm just going to put a capital G. Now it's super tiny. I can't see it. I need to make it larger. So I'm going to go back to my selection tool, click on my tiny G. Tiny G. And then I'm going to hold the shift key because then it will keep the sizes proportionally, right? It can only get so big as a font. So I can't, that's not bad. For now, we'll leave it there. And then I know I want this to be Times New Roman. Good enough. Now I'm going to type my last name. Yep. Type tool. I need to be, yeah, just away from that G. There you go. All right. And then I'm just going to type in the last name. I can't see. Just go with it. Be one with the typing. All right. I'm going to go back to my selections selection tool, hold the shift key, make it bigger. And I know I'm going to want this right here. Oh, that's too big. I'm off the screen. All right. And I know what font I want for this one. This one's going to be homework. There we are. So keep going here or should I just keep making my design? Yeah, just keep making your design. All right. And my rectangle tool, I know I want a little rectangle down here. Guess about that size. Raise this up a little so we can see what we're doing. And then I'm going to Ctrl C, Ctrl V, kind of create a copy. I'm going to put this here. Probably going to need to be another size because I need text here first. Here, EST 2014. Selection tool, shift key. Oh, so fancy. Well, I don't think I want that font. I want it to be more like an aerial font. This one, except it's a little skinny. So do they have a bowl? Oh, they do have a bowl. All right. And that's not bad. Right? Are you good with that? Should I scrinch it up a little? I'd probably make the rectangles a little smaller. Hold the shift key and just resize them over here. Well, I would copy one and paste it back over there now. I don't know if you'd ever be able to get the same size again. So select these. I don't want all that, though. Yeah, I think it's time you start creating outlines of your fonts. Because if you choose to center these or align these on middle, since it's a font, it has a space under it and it won't actually align through middle. All right. Well, I can't... Can I just... I can't... Yeah, I have a control Z. So how do you get my G out of the way? Just convert them all. Just go ahead and start converting before I mess it up even further. Now it's becoming a pain in the butt with them as fonts. Okay. All right. So now I have the design essentially there. But what we want to do from here is actually make this into a cuttable font. Right now, if you were to load the font directly into Glowforge, what would it do? It'll say there's text in your file and it won't load as a cuttable piece of artwork. So we need this text to look like an image or a graphic. Yeah, it just needs to be converted to a vector based. It needs to be turned into numbers instead of letters. All right. Don't get too technical on me. All right. Let's start with the... So we can hide things right now, right? If I go to my layers and I expand this layer. So we'll just hide everything that I'm not using right now. Oh, I do want that. Where's this little guy? He's top layer. Hide him. All right. So we're going to take our G and then basically we're going to create an outline of the text that we see. Right? And that was under type. Create outlines. Yeah. Done. Done. Okay. So I will... Nope. I will hide this and I'll bring this one back. Same thing. Select the word, type, create outlines. Oh, and this is a script type font. So you're going to have to unite all of these letters. Okay. And I'm going to do that under... Window. Window. Pathfinder. Pathfinder. And unite is that first button. Unite. Okay. So that's kind of like merge and cricket, right? Design space. Yeah. It's kind of like merge. Okay. So now we have that. We have this G. Established. And then... Okay. I'll hide these and bring back established. This rectangle and this rectangle. This one. Same thing, right? Yep. Same thing. So I'm just going to go to type. Create outlines. And then that's it, right? Yep. And then for this one, I don't... Because it's already a graphic, I don't have to create an outline or I do. No. You don't have to. Okay. So now I should bring everything back. We're good? Yeah. Okay. So should I center everything yet? Or... Yeah. Put everything where you want it to be now. Okay. So I kind of want to center this and center that. These guys center. And then I guess this. Well, yeah, select the two outer pieces and group those. I don't think I want to yet. I just want to move this over a little. Well, I was going to say because then you'll be able to center established in between them. So now this one. Shift. Are they aligned in the middle? In the middle. Yes. All right. Group them. And then object group. Yep. Now you can pick up... Now hold shift and pick up the date. Select all of them. Just basically select all of them. Yeah. And then align center. Yeah. And middle. And align middle. Middle. Okay. Yep. All right. Does that look great? Yeah. Does that look great to you? This looks like it should go over. I mean, I aligned it center so it knows more than I do. Okay. So our next step is... So we have our design complete. Next step is actually making it a cutable file. Yep. Do you want to make it layers? Yes. So in order to cut this, I can't set gentry on top of the G. There'll be a space under there. You can't glue it down. It's a mess. Yeah. And try cutting it out and then piecing it back together. The letters around each other. Almost impossible. Takes forever. Yeah. So in some other things you might, you know, you'll see other designs where you'll cut gentry out of the G. You don't want to do that. We're going to actually put gentry on top of the G and make it multi-layered. Yeah. A lot easier to paint. Yes. It's definitely a lot easier to paint that way. Okay. So next step. So go to layers. One of my layers. Find gentry. Gentry. And then create, use your little hamburger and duplicate this, this layer, this compound layer. Okay. Now hide one of them. Now select the G and gentry. The G. Shift and select gentry. Kind of select the selection piece. Okay. And now unite these. Unite. Yep. Okay. Now you want to give this a color so we'll be able to like give it a different color. So this I will want in like this color gray. Okay. Now bring the other gentry back. The other gentry. Done. There you go. Yep. All right. So you're ready to send it to cut, cut. Go ahead and select everything there except the backer right now. So again, I'm just holding this left mouse button and dragging it so that I'm selecting all the text. And let's make a copy, copy paste. Control C, control V. Yeah. Move it over to the right. Okay. Let's see. Now let's get that black gentry off of the gray gentry. And I select all of these elements. All of them. Yep. Okay. And we'll get rid of the fill. No fill. And give them a red stroke. I like red because it means cut. So for us, we use red as cut. All right. So. And go back over to the backer. Yeah. Looks, everything looks right. All right. And now with the backer still locked, select gentry. Well, you can delete the top gentry. You can delete the black one. And get rid of it. Okay. And then select the established and gentry. Lose the fill. And give this one a blue stroke. This one? You're still in fill. Oh, I do that every time. Stroke. Now, don't make the mistake because I did. This doesn't give you the color. Don't click on the word stroke. Click on this little box right here. And then select blue. Right? We're gonna. Yeah. So the plan here is that we'll, oh, let me finish that. Yeah. We're gonna make this cuttable. Right? Unlock the backer. Yeah. Okay. So. Unlock. You can just select the whole thing. No fill. And give it a red stroke. Give it a red stroke because we want to cut the backer out. Okay. And that's it. You got yourself a cut file. Well, now you have to export it. Okay. So what we've got so far is we will cut our backer. We're gonna score where gentry goes right on the backer. That way we know we've got perfect placement. These score marks have been lifesavers for me for everything that we beat. Oh, yeah. We didn't have them at first and I was like, how am I supposed to center this? And I tried using the cutout and it becomes a mess because then you end up gluing that down. Score marks are the only way to go. And now I have the base layer G and then gentry that will go on top of this to make it multi-layered. And then 2014 we'll go down at the bottom. Okay. All right. Great. Now file, export as and just name it whatever. Where do we put it? This is fine for now. Okay. Name it as monogram. Gentry. Gentry. Sure. And just keep all the defaults. So font SPG images in bed, layer names, all this just hit okay. Yeah. Okay. That's it. All right. Ready to cut it out. Let's go cut it and see what we get. Well, let's go ahead. We'll import it into Clue Forge. I didn't know he already had this open. Yeah. Upload? Upload. I think I put it in download. Monogram. Gentry. Open. We're going to use a quarter inch MDF. So just go to unknown thick draft board. And then let's make this a little smaller so you can see it. There you go. And because it's 18 inch, go ahead and hit. It's so hard to see the thing in there. That's because there's no board in there. Go ahead and hit pass through. Pro pass through. Just toggle that on. Yeah, toggle that on. All right. Now, Control A. Drag this up a little bit. Keep going to the bottom. All right. There you go. There you go. Now over on the side, let's go ahead and select this one, the top one, and make that score. And then the other one's cut. And we're ready. Do we leave it just on draft? Yeah, because we're just using it for placement purposes. We don't need high quality. It goes a little deeper with high quality. Give me the gist of where to line this thing up. Draft. All right. And then this one is already cut. So now will we come back? So we're going to cut this first. We have our score marks. We have our round. Then we'll slide this over and cut this. Because the only thing that cuts is what is in on the board here. In that lane. In this lane. In the Pro Pass lane. It's the passing lane. All right. Well, let's go turn her on. It's off and make it cut. No, I get to say it because I created it. Okay. What do you think? Making files is a whole lot easier than you thought, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, to create that, so I had no idea how to do the fonts previously. Now you could see I had learned a little here in the last few months, but I still don't know how to do everything in Adobe Illustrator. You do know how important that shift key is. Yeah. I learned a few things. Still don't have it down in muscle memory like Garrett does. We painted this one kind of poppy, but I want to just show you what you can do. And I hope you guys learned a little something along the way. If you like the tutorials, then leave us a comment down below and we'll do more of these videos. Yeah. What other tutorials would you like to see? Something a little more intricate, a little more advanced? Well, how to bring in a graphics. I think the next one would be how to bring in some sort of clip art from somewhere and then make it a cuttable file. Oh, that's a good one. That's a easy one. Surprisingly. Big thanks to all of our patrons. We love you guys. You guys really helped make all of this happen. Thank you. We love interacting with you. We love all of the comments that we get back on Fridays when I put up new files and stuff. Yeah. It is definitely our Make It Fam. Yeah, definitely a Make It Fam. All right. This one's pretty tough. I know these are tough. You can balance it if you want to. When you're about out of time, Kim's rushing me. We will see you next week where we'll do it, build it and make it again. Oh, you're going to do it. No, I can't even do it. I can't even do it. Oh, it's got that gentle touch. It's the gentle touch. Wow, that was pretty good. Hold on for a minute.