Monday, February 9, 2009

Another "hide Contour" issue solved....



In working with the "hide selected contour" option there is another quirk that I think I have figured out. JenC - a friend from the Cricut Message Board (and another Design Studio obsessed crafter!), asked me to check one of her files. She had the problem, which I had noticed in some of my files as well, that, when saving a file with hidden contours, they sometimes would not be hidden upon reopening the file. I looked at the file she sent me to test and had the same issues she described.

I experimented with hiding various combinations and using different orders of operations for doing the hiding and I think I have finally found the cause of this problem and a solution for it too!

From what I have been able to determine, if you hide just one contour within a keypad shape, close the file and then reopen it, the contour line you hid does not stay hidden! Needless to say, this can be annoying since you have to remember to rehide it each time you use the file and if you share the file with someone else they will also have the problem.

Here are some quick screen shots to show you how I "fixed" the problem - a few extra steps to take when you create the file, but then you will be able to cut it as intended without needing to remember to rehide each time you use the file.



For an easy example I am using this smiley face (which is actually a flower center) from the New Arrival cartridge. Let's say I wanted to cut this but did not want the mouth to cut. It would seem that all I needed to do would be to select the mouth (left click on the exact line of the mouth and it turns red) and then hide the contour (right click and choose "hide selected contour" from the pop up menu which turns the mouth pale blue).



Above is a screen shot of the preview after hiding the mouth. If I want to cut the design right away this works and the design will cut with no mouth, however, if I save and close the file and then reopen it later - the mouth is back again as a cutting line and I have to rehide it. A bit frustrating!



Here is the solution I came up with. Click somewhere else on the mat to deselect the first shape and add another shape of the same size to the mat. As you can see above I have two smiley faces with eyes and mouths.



Then, on one of the faces, hide the mouth and one other line - in this case the eye on the right side of the face. On the other smiley face, hide everything except the eye on the right side of the face (the "extra" item you hid to keep the mouth hidden). You can see a preview of this above.



Then, click on the face on the left side of the mat and check the X and Y coordinates. Select the smiley face on the right side of the mat and change the values in the X and Y boxes to the same numbers (here X is .845 and Y is .612). The Y value is probably already the same if you just added another smiley face and did not move it around on your mat.



When you preview the mat looks like this - the mouth is blue and the other three lines (the circle and two eyes) will cut once each. The lines look a bit odd because there is one blue one from the shape with the hidden line and one black line from the shape with the non-hidden line. The eye on the right looks darker because it is from the face that is "on top" of the other face



To get the best view of what will cut you can create a new blank page and preview the cut (I usually put one of these pages in my files and name it "preview page"). The screen after previewing will look like the screen shot above.



Now when you go to use the file again it will be ready to cut and you won't have to remember to "rehide" any cutting lines. If you are hiding a"detail" or "webbing" line the same procedure will work but your preview on the blank page will not show the webbing lines.

I hope this saves many of you some frustration - I have no idea why the software won't let you hide just one contour but, as in many other circumstances, there is a "workaround" for the problem.

(I know I said there would be a new file for today but I am not sure if I will have time to post again - there will definitely be a new file tomorrow - in the meanwhile I hope you found this information helpful...)

17 comments:

  1. Once again, you totally amaze me!!

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  2. You amaze me with your knowledge of DS.

    SallyW

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  3. Thank you so much, I haven't had this problem yet, but probably would have in the future. Now I know what to do. You are great, and you explain everything so clearly. Keep up the wonderful work that you do.
    Sharon Luvtobug

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  4. I have to agree, you are totally amazing

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  5. Yes, you are amazing. And I need Help, help! I tried this on my baby bottle file that was my first problem and it worked. Then I tried it on my Class of 2009 and it didn't work. :o(

    Were your sons by any chance Falcons?

    Jill

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  6. Thanks! I will add this to my Cap help files!!!! :):):)

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  7. I have a question if you can help...I tried to use the "hide contour" option but I can't seem to get my smiley face mouth to turn red when I left click and there is not an option for the hide contour when I right click, do you know where it went?

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  8. Hi (anonymous),

    You need to have the tip of your "mouse pointer arrow" directly on the line of a design to select it. If you do not have a line selected by a left click (turned red) there will be no "hide selected contour" when you right click - it will be grayed out and inactive.

    It takes a bit to get used to this method of selecting the lines but it will become more comfortable eventually.

    Good Luck!

    Diane

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  9. Thank you so much for looking into this and finding a solution... frustrating i agree and i hope ProvoCraft fixes this in their next revision :)

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  10. Thanks so much for this Diane.

    Any ideas how I can get this to work on a cut that I have designed with multiple hidden contours?

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  11. Hi SewDelish,

    If you have hidden multiple lines within the same element they will stay hidden when the file is closed and reopened.

    If there are at least three contours in an element you can use this fix.

    The problem I haven't been able to solve is how to hide one contour when there are only two in the element.....maybe the next update will fix this for us!

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  12. You do such great work
    Sure helps me out a lot
    Thank you

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  13. I JUST ran into this problem the other day. Initially, I thought I had forgotten to Save my file after Hiding my Contour. Then, when it happened again, I thought my DS was flaking out!

    Thanks for the explanation and the workaround!

    ~Molly

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  14. Wow - thanks so much for the info! I didn't know about the hide contour. Loving design studio even more!

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  15. The cards you showed were so nice and the info you gave thanks. The La Creme papers you used I just bought their's and I can't wait to get started on them. Beautiful papers they produce and fancy stickers. Thanks for sharing..

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  16. You are very amazing and so very kind.
    Thank you

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