Scalloped and wavy edges

On the shape screen the scallop sits directly under the outline, because that is what it modifies. A scalloped rectangle is still a rectangle — the wave is a displacement along the path it already has.

Two numbers

Scallop depth, in centimetres, is the switch as well as the setting: 0 is a straight edge and is the default. Anything above 0 turns the edge finish on.

Wave every, also in centimetres, is a target rather than an instruction. It is snapped to whatever divides the edge into a whole number of waves, and the screen reports how many waves the file came out with and what they measure.

The scallops bite inward, and the artwork does not move

This is the part that surprises people. Half of every wave cuts into the printed area, so content within the scallop depth of the edge comes off the piece. The artwork is not inset to make room for it.

The screen prints how deep that band is — "eats 1.2 cm into the artwork edge" — and the blade offset is what pulls the whole cut clear of it. Keep logos and text out of a band equal to the scallop depth plus your offset.

A scallop deeper than the page can hold is brought back to what fits, rather than being drawn off the sheet. The page never grows — its size is in the filename and the whole shop reads it — so the depth comes down instead, and the report names both the depth you asked for and the depth you got. On a standard page that ceiling is about 8 mm.

Circles, ellipses and corners

Running the wave around the whole perimeter is the default and is what a circle or an ellipse wants, since neither has a corner to anchor to.

On a rectangle or a rounded board you usually want some sides waved and others straight — a banner scalloped on three sides that stands on a flat bottom. That is its own guide: waving some edges and not others.

Node count

A scalloped edge is a lot of points — a 42 cm panel comes to well over a thousand — and a node at every one of them is a path the cutter grinds through. The waves are fitted down to smooth curves instead, which gives the same line in a couple of hundred nodes.

How far the fitted scallop may stray from the true wave is a millimetre tolerance, 0.5 mm by default, and loosening it gives fewer nodes. It is set from the command line rather than on the screen. See reducing node count on a heavy path.

It is still a cut path

A scalloped outline closes like any other cut, in the CutContour separation at 3 pt with a round join and cap. Only score lines are ever open.