Weld vs Attach - Dara E Designs

Have you been hearing that you need to “Weld” this or you should “Attach” that from your crafty friends when discussing Cricut projects? Maybe you’ve been trying trying to create designs with script fonts, but get frustrated by the Cricut machine cutting between each letter of the word? Or perhaps you’ve wanted to cut different layers of a project from the same material, but you don’t know how to get it to cut in the arrangement it’s shown on the screen. Well friends, I’m here to help! Today we are talking all about Weld vs Attach. These two tools in Cricut Design Space are so important! Once you start using them, you’ll never look back!

First, let me start by giving a quick tip for remembering how each tool functions. If you look in the bottom of your layers panel you will see the slice, weld, attach, flatten, and contour tools (Today we are just focusing on Weld and Attach).

Just above the word Weld you will see an image of a square and a circle that have been joined together. An easy way to remember what weld actually does is to look at this image. Essentially when you weld layers together you are taking multiple shapes and joining them to create one new shape.

Now look at the image shown above the word Attach. You will see that it is a paperclip. Attach is used to keep multiple layers together, but they are still separate shapes.

Now let’s talk about a few ways each of these tools are helpful when creating projects in Design Space. This will help give you an idea of when to use weld vs attach.

When to Weld:

When using script fonts (cursive lettering), weld will join the letters so the word cuts as one piece.
When you want to create a more detailed shape, use weld to join simple shapes to make a new shape.

Here are a few examples to show how this works:

Welding Script Fonts:

When you type in a script font in Cricut Design Space you will notice right away that the letters aren’t connected. So the first step to creating a cursive word is to reduce the letter spacing (Shown below).

If you look closely at the word above you will see lines where the letters overlap. If we cut the word as it is shown right now, we will end up with individual letters instead of a joined word. This is where the weld tool comes to the rescue! Simply click on the word, and then click weld. Now check out the image below. The lines between the letters have disappeared, which means they are now joined. They will cut as one word (with the exception of the “s”, of course).

Welding Shapes Together:

Let’s make a quick flower using the Weld tool and the heart from the Shapes tool. As you can see below, I have duplicated the heart shape 4 times.

Next I overlapped the hearts, and as you can see it’s beginning to look more like a flower.

Once the shapes are placed in a position I’m happy with, I selected all of the layers and hit “Weld”. Drumroll……….We have a fun little flower!

When to Attach:

When you want your images to cut as they’re shown on your Canvas.
When you are using the draw or score tools, to keep them in the right area.

Attaching Layers to Cut As They Appear on Canvas:

For this example I uploaded the Crafting is My Love Language SVG file. I designed this file so the individual letters that make up the words “crafting” & “love” are their own layers (This give crafters a little more freedom to change not only the color of the word, but also the individual letters.)

Since this design has so many layers, it’s a great example to show you how the Cricut cuts the design as it is versus how the Cricut cuts the design when layers are attached to each other.

The following two images show how the Cricut will cut the design if you click Make It without using the Attach tool.

As you can see, it puts the letters in a random order. This option is great for saving supplies, but sometimes we want to cut designs with the words and shapes in a certain placement.

Now we’ll go back to the canvas, select the layers we want to attach together (For this example I will attach the individual letters that make up the word Crafting), and then click attach.

Let’s take a look what happens when we click Make It now.

As you can see, the word crafting will cut as one word, instead of a jumble of letters.

Attaching Layers for Scoring or Drawing:

This is basically the same principle we used with attaching letters in the previous example, but it’s extremely important to use when scoring or drawing.

For this example I’m going to make a simple square card with a score down the middle.

I selected a square from the shapes menu. Then unlocked the size to create a rectangle. Then I selected the score line from the shapes menu. Adjusted the size to be as tall as the rectangle.

If I don’t attach the layers this is what will happen:

The machine will score on one sheet, and then it will want you to remove the mat and load another sheet to cut the card out.

Now here is what we need to do on the canvas to get the score down the middle of what will be our card. Select both the rectangle and the score line layers, and click attach. Click Make It. Here is what we get:

Our card will now cut and the score will be on the correct area!

…And that my friends is Weld vs Attach all summed up! If you have any questions leave me a comment below, and for more crafting tips be sure to follow Dara E Designs on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

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