How to Add Roland BN-20 Cut Lines in Illustrator for VersaWorks

If you're new to Roland BN-20 or BN-20A one of the most intimidating parts can be add cut lines for VersaWorks - especially to PNG and JPEG images. 

Fortunately it's not only easy to vectorize a JPEG or PNG to SVG in Silhouette Studio, but it's easy to do the very last step in Adobe Illustrator. 

This tutorial is part of a five part series on using Silhouette Studio to create contour cut lines including bleed lines and white borders that are recognized by other software programs including Illustrator. If you haven't started from the beginning of the series, I would highly suggest you do that to learn: 

1. How to Create a Contour Cut Line in Silhouette Studio by Tracing (Convert JPEG or PNG to SVG)
2. How to Create a Contour Cut Line with White Border in Silhouette Studio
3. How to Create a Full Color Bleed to Avoid White Edges when Printing and Cutting

This tutorial assumes you have a firm understanding of the three critical steps before advancing...and that you have Silhouette Studio Business Edition along with Adobe Illustrator. 

Start by launching Adobe Illustrator and go to File > Open to navigate to the SVG design to open it in the software. 

From the Window Menu make sure "Layers" is checked so you have the Layers panel on the right side of the software.

Within the Layers Panel, click the small arrow to expand and see all layers in your design.

You only want to select the contour cut line. The image itself will be called Clip / Graphic / Image. The "Group" is the cut line so click the small circle target next to that. 

If you happen to have multiple contour cut lines (due to text or your design is not one solid piece) you can select them all by clicking the targets next to all of them in the Layers panel. 

The cut line or lines will highlight in blue. 

Now you want to open the Roland VersaWorks from the Illustrator Swatch Library by going to the Window menu > Swatch Libraries > Roland VersaWorks.

If you haven't downloaded and added the VersaWorks color swatches to Illustrator yet, you're going to want to do that first. You can download them here free.

With the Contour Cut Line layer still selected, click the pink CutContour swatch to change the line color to the one VersaWorks will recognize as the cut path. 

You can confirm the VersaWorks cut lines have been set correctly by checking the swatch line color on the left sidebar.

This same process works whether the cut contour line you created in Silhouette Studio is a bleed line or an offset line used to give your design a white edge. 

Now you're ready to export the file with the VersaWorks Cut lines from Illustrator.  This can be easily done by going to File > Save As and selecting "PDF" as the format. 

You can now move over into Roland VersaWorks and open the file by going to File > Add to Queue. 

When the file loads into the queue, right click and select Settings. You'll get a preview of the file with the contour cut line indicated by "dancing ants" or what looks like an animated red perforated line. 

Now when you go to print and cut the image on your Roland BN-20A the contour cut line will be placed exactly where you set it! 

 

This same process works whether your Roland VersaWorks Contour Cut line is right on the edge, offset to create a white border around the entire shape or inside the bleed.

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