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Create Cutout

Cutouts are a special feature one can use with cuttings printers. When printing a PDF file containing cutouts paths, a cutting printer will cut these paths with a cutter rather than print them with ink. Use cutouts to create stickers, iron on decals, etc.

Cutouts can be created from an SVG string describing its underlying shape. Cutouts can also be created from combining multiple existing cutouts using the boolean operations union, difference, intersection and xor.

Cutouts have a type property which can take one of two values: solid and dashed. Cutting printers recognize cutouts paths through their specially named spot colors. By default, solid cutouts have the spot color "CutContour" to produce a continuous cutting line and dashed cutouts have the spot colors "PerfCutContour" to produce a perforated cutting line. You may need to adjust these spot color names for you printer.

Cutouts have an offset property that determines the distance at which the cutout path is rendered from the underlying path set when created.

Setup the scene

We first create a new scene with a new page.

  let scene = try engine.scene.create()


  let page = try engine.block.create(.page)
  try engine.block.setWidth(page, value: 800)
  try engine.block.setHeight(page, value: 600)
  try engine.block.appendChild(to: scene, child: page)

Create cutouts

Here we add two cutouts. First, a circle of type dashed and with an offset of 3.0. Second, a square of default type solid and an offset of 6.0.

  let circle = try engine.block.createCutoutFromPath("M 0,25 a 25,25 0 1,1 50,0 a 25,25 0 1,1 -50,0 Z")
  try engine.block.setFloat(circle, property: "cutout/offset", value: 3.0)
  try engine.block.setEnum(circle, property: "cutout/type", value: "Dashed")


  var square = try engine.block.createCutoutFromPath("M 0,0 H 50 V 50 H 0 Z")
  try engine.block.setFloat(square, property: "cutout/offset", value: 6.0)

Combining multiple cutouts into one

Here we use the union operation to create a new cutout that consists of the combination of the earlier two cutouts we have created. Note that we destroy the previously created circle and square cutouts as we don’t need them anymore and we certainly don’t want to printer to cut through those paths as well.

When combining multiple cutouts, the resulting cutout will be of the type of the first cutout given and an offset of 0. In this example, since the circle cutout is of type dashed, the newly created cutout will also be of type dashed.

var union = try engine.block.createCutoutFromOperation(containing: [circle, square], cutoutOperation: .union)
try engine.block.destroy(circle)
try engine.block.destroy(square)

Change the default color for Solid cutouts

For some reason, we’d like the cutouts of type solid to not render as magenta but as blue. Knowing that "CutContour" is the spot color associated with solid, we change it RGB approximation to blue. Thought the cutout will render as blue, the printer will still interpret this path as a cutting because of its special spot color name.

engine.editor.setSpotColor(name: "CutContour", r: 0.0, g: 0.0, b: 1.0)

Full Code

Here’s the full code:

import Foundation
import IMGLYEngine


@MainActor
func cutouts(engine: Engine) async throws {
  let scene = try engine.scene.create()


  let page = try engine.block.create(.page)
  try engine.block.setWidth(page, value: 800)
  try engine.block.setHeight(page, value: 600)
  try engine.block.appendChild(to: scene, child: page)


  let circle = try engine.block.createCutoutFromPath("M 0,25 a 25,25 0 1,1 50,0 a 25,25 0 1,1 -50,0 Z")
  try engine.block.setFloat(circle, property: "cutout/offset", value: 3.0)
  try engine.block.setEnum(circle, property: "cutout/type", value: "Dashed")


  var square = try engine.block.createCutoutFromPath("M 0,0 H 50 V 50 H 0 Z")
  try engine.block.setFloat(square, property: "cutout/offset", value: 6.0)


  var union = try engine.block.createCutoutFromOperation(containing: [circle, square], cutoutOperation: .union)
  try engine.block.destroy(circle)
  try engine.block.destroy(square)


  engine.editor.setSpotColor(name: "CutContour", r: 0.0, g: 0.0, b: 1.0)
}