Eventually I unpacked it, and tried it out using a design from their template library. It worked really well, cutting the fabric beautifully! I was going out on Tuesday evening, so I stopped there, happy that it was all going to turn out fine.
On Wednesday, I attempted to work with an embroidery design. I needed something exactly the right size, so I printed out the design info from my embroidery software.I calibrated my phone camera. I tried to take a pic of the design and to import that pic into Silhouette studio. I failed. Several times.
I then tried to do it using my flatbed scanner, which after a bit of faffing about and watching Youtube videos (thank goodness for YouTube and the people who post there!), I managed to get my design imported.
I then completely failed to get the software to work with the design. The manual, and the online help, were not very helpful at all, so I googled and searched, and worked out what was wrong. The Cameo software was trying to trace both sides of the outline instead of seeing just one line, and it was also too faint.
Next, I trued cutting out the design on some coloured paper and scanning that. Now that actually worked - except that the edges were scrappy where I'd cut with scissors. In terms of using the cut fabric, it wasn't any better than what I'd been doing originally, it still required a lot of trimming.
Eventually I gave up with trying to use the printed image, and took the drastic step of actually creating the item using black fabric, and then scanning the created item.
I was then ready to try and make the real thing.
