How do you add a non cut image to a Cricut svg cut file

Question

I am trying to make a tuck box with an image on one side. I generate an svg from template maker. When I import the svg to the Cricut design space, everything is fine and it gets cut out perfectly. However, when I try to add an image to one side it all goes wrong. It adds a cut around the image. Most of the techniques to avoid this involve adding a contour or shape around it but that is not what I want. How do I keep cuts as defined by my template, with an image printed on one side?

Answer 1

Cricut Design Space is meant as a tool to configure only stuff your Cricut machine can actually do.

If your Cricut has only one tool attachment and you install a blade tool in that slot, it can cut the template of a box, but nothing more than that.

If your Cricut has 2 tool slots, one with a blade and one with a pen, you can cut the box and draw a design on it in one go.

However, the machine cannot print like an ink or laser printer. It has to draw by dragging a pen over the surface in a line. Just like we humans can distinguish a line drawing from a painting, computers distinguish between bitmaps (images filled with pixels) and vectors (images made of lines instead of pixels). Bitmaps are called "flat graphics" in Design Space. Cricut can only process vectors and it provides you with a selection of vectorized images in the integrated image library (see help page). It also provides a function to convert regular images into vectors (see help page).

If the image you chose isn't vectorized (called "flat image" in Design Space), it's impossible for Cricut to draw it. So instead it does the best thing it's capable of and puts a border around it. And if that border has the same color as the lines that are supposed to be cut, the image gets cut from the box. More on line types and tool selection in the Cricut help.

As an alternative, you can first print the image on a regular printer and then insert it into Cricut to be cut. That requires adding sensor marks so Cricut knows where it's supposed to cut. Read more in the help.

If you do have a vector image and want to use several tools on the same file, you'll have to define one layer for each tool. Put the box template in one layer and configure it to be cut, then put the image in a second layer and configure it to be drawn. Read more in the help.