How to Create a Roland BN-20 Contour Cut Line Using Silhouette Studio and Affinity Designer

If you're new to Roland BN-20 or BN-20A one of the most intimidating parts can be creating contour cut lines. Fortunately it's easy to add a VersaWorks contour cut lines in Affinity Designer using a cut line and SVG created in Silhouette Studio. 

In fact pairing Affinity Designer and Silhouette Studio is my favorite and most recommended way to quickly and easily add Roland VersaWorks contour cut lines and perf cut lines so you can get on with printing and cutting.

This tutorial is part of a five part series on using Silhouette Studio to create contour cut lines including bleed lines and white borders. 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 and Affinity Designer. 

Start by launching Affinity Designer and going to File > Open. Navigate to the SVG design to open it in the software. 

From the View Menu make sure "Show Right Studio" is checked along with at least: Layers, Swatches and Stroke. 

When the image opens up in the work area, go to the Stroke menu on the right side.

Expand the Layers and then select ONLY the path layer. 

You will see the cut line you created around the design highlight in blue and you can also confirm because the swatch color should be the same color that you created it in Silhouette Studio. In this case - green.

From the color swatch drop down, pick the Roland VersaWorks palette. 

Note: If you haven't added the VersaWorks Contour Cut line color swatches to Affinity yet, follow this tutorial before going any further. 

Click the Stroke icon at the top (hollow circle - mine is green). 

Change it to the Cut Contour color swatch by clicking the Magenta Contour Cut line color. 

When you deselect by clicking outside of the image, you'll see the contour cut line has turned pink. 

You can do the same whether you made a bleed area or have the cut line right on the edge of the design

Now export the file as a PDF by going to File > Export. 

Select PDF and click the "Export" button.  

Now move over to Roland VersaWorks and go to File > Add Job to Queue. 

Find the PDF on your computer and import into VersaWorks. 

You can confirm the location of the cut line by right clicking the job's name in the queue and clicking "Settings." 

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YOU'RE IN! See You Soon!

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