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...)