Crafter's glossary

Plain-English definitions for the terms that come up in Cricut, Silhouette, and craft cutter projects — SVG, DXF, HTV, weeding, Print Then Cut, and more.

Adhesive vinyl: Vinyl with a sticky back, used for decals on walls, cars, tumblers, and other smooth hard surfaces. Cuts cleanly on Cricut and Silhouette machines.
Anchor point: A control point along an SVG path. Fewer anchors mean smoother cuts; too many cause blade chatter and ragged edges in vinyl.
Attach (Design Space): A Cricut Design Space function that holds selected layers in their relative positions on the mat. Without Attach, Design Space rearranges layers efficiently and your design alignment is lost.
Bleed: Extra printed material extending past the cut line in Print Then Cut, used to prevent thin white slivers along the edge from printer-to-cutter misalignment.
Brother ScanNCut: A family of craft cutting machines from Brother that accept SVG and FCM files via USB or wireless transfer. Includes a built-in scanner for tracing physical artwork.
Cardstock: Heavy paper used for greeting cards, invitations, and layered paper projects. Most Cricut and Silhouette machines handle 65-110 lb cardstock without a deep-point blade.
Compound path: An SVG path made up of multiple sub-paths treated as a single shape — used for letters with interior cutouts (the inside of an O, A, P) so the counter cuts out correctly.
Cricut: A family of consumer craft cutting machines. Maker series cuts the widest material range (including thicker wood and metal); Explore is lighter duty; Joy is portable and limited to 4.5" wide material.
Cricut Design Space: Cricut's free software (web and mobile) for laying out designs and sending them to the cutting machine. Accepts SVG, PNG, JPG, and a handful of other formats.
Cut file: A digital file describing where a blade should cut. SVG and DXF are the most common cut-file formats; FCM is Brother's proprietary equivalent.
Decal: A piece of cut adhesive vinyl meant to be applied to a hard surface — laptops, water bottles, car windows, mugs.
DXF: Drawing Exchange Format. A vector file format originating in AutoCAD, common for laser cutters and CNC machines. Supported by Cricut and Silhouette but less common than SVG.
Engrave: Using a fine engraving tip (not a blade) to scratch a permanent mark into a material like acrylic, leather, or anodized aluminum blanks. On Cricut, set the layer operation to Engrave.
Flatten (Design Space): A function that merges multiple layers into a single printable image, required to prepare a design for Print Then Cut.
Foil transfer: A technique using the Cricut Foil Transfer Kit to apply foil over scored lines for metallic accents on paper or cardstock projects.
Group (Design Space): Bundles layers together for selection and movement, but does NOT preserve relative positions on the mat — use Attach for that.
HTV (Heat Transfer Vinyl): Vinyl applied to fabric (shirts, hoodies, tote bags) using a heat press or iron. Designs must be mirrored before cutting because they're applied face-down.
Iron-on: Cricut's branded term for HTV. Same product; same mirroring requirement.
JPG / JPEG: A raster image format using lossy compression. Common for photos. Must be vectorized into an SVG before a craft cutter can cut along its edges.
Kiss cut: A cut depth that goes through the vinyl or HTV but not the backing/carrier sheet, allowing the design to be peeled off in one piece.
Layer: A single-color portion of a multi-color design that gets cut from one piece of material. SVGCutter outputs one layer per detected color.
Mat: The sticky cutting mat that holds material in place during cutting. Standard Cricut mat is 12x12 inches; large mat is 12x24 inches; Joy uses a 4.5x6.5 mat.
Mirror: Flipping a design horizontally before cutting. Required for HTV/iron-on so the design reads correctly after the carrier sheet is peeled away.
Negative space: The parts of a vinyl design that get weeded away — the material around your final cut shapes that's removed before applying the design.
Node: Another name for an anchor point on a vector path. Used interchangeably in Design Space and other vector tools.
Operation (Design Space): The action assigned to a layer: Basic Cut, Print Then Cut, Score, Engrave, Draw, Foil, etc. Defaults to Basic Cut; change it explicitly for scoring, engraving, or drawing.
Path: A line in an SVG defined by mathematical coordinates rather than pixels. What the blade physically follows during a cut.
PNG: Portable Network Graphics. A raster image format (pixels) with lossless compression and alpha transparency. Must be vectorized into an SVG to be cut.
Print Then Cut: A workflow where you print your design on an inkjet or laser printer, then let the cutting machine cut around it. Best for stickers and full-color artwork.
Raster: An image made of pixels arranged in a grid (PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF). Resolution-dependent — scales up poorly. Opposite of vector.
Score line: A crease (not a cut) used for folding cards, boxes, and envelopes. Created with the Scoring Wheel or Scoring Stylus on Cricut, or the Scoring Tool on Silhouette.
Silhouette: A family of craft cutters from Silhouette America — Cameo (most popular), Portrait (smaller), and Curio (engraving and embossing). Uses Silhouette Studio software.
Slice (Design Space): A function that cuts one shape out of another, leaving two new shapes. Used for creating windows, knockouts, and intersecting designs.
SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics. A text-based XML file format that stores shapes as mathematical paths — exactly what a craft cutter's blade follows. Scales to any size without quality loss.
Vector: An image made of mathematical paths instead of pixels. Scales to any size losslessly. SVG and DXF are the common vector formats for craft cutting.
Vectorize: The process of tracing a raster image (PNG, JPG) into a vector (SVG). SVGCutter does this automatically with craft-friendly settings — smooth paths, separated colors, tiny shapes filtered out.
Vinyl: Sticky-backed sheet material used for cutting on Cricut and Silhouette. Adhesive vinyl for hard surfaces; HTV (heat transfer vinyl) for fabric.
Weed: The process of removing excess vinyl or HTV from around your cut design. Weeding tweezers or a weeding hook help. Weed-friendly designs minimize tiny pieces that tear during weeding.
Weed-friendly: A design where the negative space is easy to remove without tearing the design itself. Achieved with smooth paths, minimum feature sizes around 1/8 inch, and avoiding very fine connectors.