Shapes and folds
Arch-top and rounded banners
Some outlines are a decision rather than a measurement. Rounded boards, arch-top signs and D-shape panels are drawn from parameters on the shape screen, not traced off the artwork.
4 min read
The tracer measures a silhouette. The shape screen is told one. They are two different generators and they share no setting, because banners, boards and panels have an outline somebody chose — the artwork inside has no say in it.
Use the shape screen when the answer to "where does the cut go?" is a number on a job sheet. Use the tracer when the answer is "around the artwork".
Five outlines
| Outline | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rectangle | The plain board. The default. |
| Rounded | A corner radius in centimetres, on all four corners or on two of them. |
| Arch | A curved top over straight sides. |
| Circle | Takes the shorter side of the artwork and centres it. |
| Ellipse | Fills both dimensions. |
The corner radius
One number in centimetres, and three arrangements of it: all four corners, top only, or bottom only. Top only leaves the bottom square, which is the edge a panel stands on. Bottom only is the one that hangs.
Four free numbers were deliberately not offered. The decision anybody actually makes is rounded all round, a D-shape standing up, or a D-shape hanging down — and four fields has states nobody orders.
The radius clamps to half the shorter side rather than folding the path, so past that it is simply a stadium. Asking for more is not an error, it is a different shape.
The arch radius
This is the horizontal radius of the curve. Left at 0 it means the default, which is half the width — a true semicircle across the whole top. Anything smaller leaves straight shoulders under the curve.
So 0 is not a radius of nothing here. It is how you ask for that default.
Where the blade goes
The offset defaults to 0, which sits the cut on the artwork edge — the same place the tracer puts it. The sign is the thing to get right from there. The artwork sits inset within the page clearance, so a negative offset pulls the cut inside the printed area — the safe direction — and a positive one moves it outward past the artwork box into blank paper.
Positive is allowed, because a file with real bleed wants it, and the screen says what it costs: a guaranteed white sliver on every piece unless the artwork genuinely prints past its own box. Zero is not free either — a blade that drifts leaves a sliver one way and clips the art the other. It is the default because it is where the cut was asked for, not because it is proof against drift.
How big it comes out
Left alone, a PDF is read at its own page size and a raster at its own resolution. To override that, fill in both artwork dimensions — one on its own does nothing, because a lone number cannot force a size without deciding the other. That is what a 3000 px JPEG of a three-metre banner needs.
The page is then artwork plus 2 cm in total, the width rounded up to the whole centimetre, exactly as the tracer derives it. The clearance here is the total added per dimension, not a per-side figure. Older house files measured it per side; a shop running two conventions eventually cuts to the wrong one, so there is one.
What comes out
- The cut path in the CutContour separation at 3 pt, with a round join and cap and overprint off.
- Three named layers when there are folds, two when there are not: artwork, cut path, and the score lines on their own.
- A preview PNG for the screen, which is not a proof and is never sent to a customer. The shop delivers production PDFs.
If the artwork you upload already carries a cut or score separation of its own, the job says so on the result rather than quietly drawing a second path over it — the cutter would follow both.
Try it on your own artwork
Upload a file and read the preflight before you quote.