What Do Weld, Attach, & Group mean on Cricut – A MUST read tutorial

Hi Daydreamers!

Today we are going to be covering some of the MOST IMPORTANT concepts in Cricut Design Space; Weld, Attach and Group.

Learning how to, and when to use any of these tools inside Cricut Design Space will take you from rookie to expert!

If you are a beginner and are still figuring out Cricut’s software, I recommend that you read my fantastic and Ultimate Cricut Design Space tutorial. 

There are other similar and also very important tools such as Slice, Contour, Print then Cut, and Flatten. But, since I love going in-depth into each one of my posts I won’t be covering them today.

With that said, my goal with this post is that by the end of it you will see the logic of why and when you need to use Weld, Attach, and group!

Are you ready?

Let’s get started!

Tip: if you want to learn everything you need to know about iron-on (HTV) and master how to use it on different surfaces, make sure to check this amazing tutorial I put together.

What do Weld, Attach & Group Mean on Cricut Design Space?

I know it’s a little bit – or too – overwhelming to learn a new skill. It takes time, effort, mistakes, and… Frustration!

Can we agree that sometimes we just want to throw our Computer and Cricut out of the window? Some of the Cricut Frustrations come from learning and using tools or settings the wrong way.

Look at the following graphic and let’s have a little chat before I define and – later on – show you how to use each tool.

As you can see the layers – right – panel of the canvas area has a little preview of each element of your design, and at the top, you will find whether your design has been welded, attached, and/or grouped.

By clicking on the little triangle on the left of each name you can hide that preview.

Now let’s get into the meaty stuff!

What is Weld?

The Weld Tool in Cricut Design Space allows you to turn multiple layers into a single one. This tool is extremely powerful as it allows you to create new designs and elements out of simple shapes.

Something very important that you need to keep in mind is that welding can’t be reversed. Think of it like baking; from simple ingredients like flour, eggs, butter, and sugar you can make a delicious cake; however, once you mix these ingredients and put them in the oven, there’s no going back.

If you are nervous about this or think that for some reason you are going to need those designs or elements again, you can copy them and then hide them. Then, in the future, if you need to get them…. guess what!

You still have them!

What is Attach?

Attach, in my opinion, is the most important tool inside Cricut Design Space. Normally, this little setting here is what causes THE MOST HEADACHES for beginners.

Pretty much on all of my tutorials, I have to give the attach warning, because if you don’t use this correctly; things will be all over the place.

Attaching allows you to keep all of the – attached – layers together. This means that when you send your project to cut, everything will be organized, just like when you designed it in Cricut Design Space.

Not only attaching keeps everything in place, but it also allows you to attribute a layer to a certain cut. For instance, in order to add scoring lines or draw on a project you need to tell your machine where to draw or score.

By attaching score or drawing lines to any other element you are telling your machine where to draw and/or score!

What is Group?

I often don’t hear a lot of people talking about grouping. I want to mention this because I personally LOVE this feature; My friend if you are not using this tool, you are missing out!

Grouping won’t affect anything regarding your cutting process. However, it will make your life easier.

How is that possible?

Grouping allows you to associate pieces of a design that have similar characteristics. If you are working with a very complex and large project you will want to group certain elements so you can change them in just a couple of clicks.

Here are some of the things you can change in an instant for all of the elements that belong to a group.

• Choose a different color
• Change the linetype to cut, score, or write
• Hide the elements
• Change other editing options like rotation, position, etc.

Weld, Attach, and Group Tutorial

Now that you have an idea of what Weld, Attach, and Group are in Cricut Design Space; let’s see a little step by step tutorial so you can say goodbye to your Cricut Frustrations and just focus on the best part…

Cutting!

How to Use Weld in Cricut Design Space?

The Weld tool is located at the bottom of the Layers panel of the Cricut Canvas area. Most people use weld when one or more areas are overlapping each other.

Let’s look at the following step by step on how to join three stars.

Step 1: Click on shapes – left panel – and drop three stars. Double the size of the center star.

Step 2: Move the left and right star towards the middle star in a way that all stars are overlapping with each other.

Step 3: Select all of the three stars and click on the weld tool located at the bottom of the Layers panel of the canvas area.

Tip: Try using your creativity, I am using simple shapes just to illustrate the way. However, go ahead and use different images and shapes to come up with new designs.

Use Weld to Slice Multiple Shapes Out

Did you know that you can only slice (cut out of) one shape or element against another one?

Let’s say you want to cut out some stars of a piece of paper. With the normal process, you would have to slice multiple times to cut out all of the stars.

Annoying, right?

To cope with that I always create all of the shapes that I am going to cut out of my piece of paper and then I weld them to make them into a single shape.

This little trick will save you tons of time, and I hope you really try it!

Many of these welding techniques are in my Cricut Card Making tutorial. So if you want to put into practice all the things you are learning today. That’s the best place to start.

Welding text in Design Space

I won’t get into details about how to use and edit text in Cricut Design Space, however, I wanted to show you another use for welding.

Have you tried using a cursive or hand-lettered font in Cricut Design Space? It’s always weird and the characters are spread out.

If you want to create a single word these are the steps you would take.

1. Write your desired text and select your cursive font. Remember by default all letters will be spaced out.
2. Select the text and reduce the letter spacing, to get it almost perfect. There will be some letters overlapping each other, but we will fix this in a moment.
3. Select your text and this time click on advanced (Top menu of the canvas) and select ungroup to letters. Now you will be able to move every letter on its own. In this case, I just moved the letter C.
4. If you were going to cut your project right now, all letters would be cut out individually. To make this a single word, select all of the letters and click on the weld option located at bottom of the right – layers – panel of the canvas area.

Note: Since Weld is a permanent feature I always try to use attach first on Sans Serif fonts. The reason behind this decision is that after attaching you can modify that text, but with welding, you will no longer have text, you will have a shape.

How to use Attach in Cricut Design Space?

Many frustrations inside Cricut Design Space come from not knowing how to use the Attach tool.

Here’s the caveat; most of the things that we design belong together. For instance, if you are writing a word with your Cricut Pens, most likely you will want that word in a very specific place.

Right?

To use attach follow the next steps:

Step 1: Add all of the elements you want to cut

Step 2: Add any text or scoring lines you would like to include in your design.

Step 3: Organize your elements in the order you would like draw, score or cut them. Then select them all and then click on the attach button located at the bottom of the Layers panel.

Note: If, for some reason you need to change the size, font, and or color on just one of the elements of that particular attachment you will have to detach it order to do it.

What happens if you don’t Attach?

Cricut sends things to cut in the most efficient way, and that’s why all of the elements will appear horizontally in the mat if you don’t attach them.

Look at the screenshot down below so you can see what will happen if you don’t attach all of the layers needed on that particular design.

All of the circles lost their place. And the word “Hi” is set to be drawn in another mat.

Remember – in Design Space – Attaching is your best FRIEND!

How to use Group in Cricut Design Space?

Grouping is the BEST thing ever!

This tool makes it easier for you to bulk change color, size, rotation of the grouped elements.

All of the things you can do on a particular group are marked in a purple box in the following screenshot.

To use group, simply select all of the elements that you want to group and click on the group button located on top of the layers panel.

Check out some of the things I did using the preview screenshot. Starting I had three different groups: Yellow, Purple and Blue Hearts.

With just one click on the little eye at the top of the blue hearts group, I was able to hide the visibility of all of them. I also changed the linetype and fill with the hearts in just one step!

I know it seems simple, and you may think that you can just select them each time. However, there are times where you might be dealing with multiple pieces in a very complex design. When this happens the group tool is the best way to be efficient and keep your design in order.

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Oh!

And just so you know, I also have a FREE growing library with tons of printables and SVG files ready to be cut.
I would love for you to be able to get access to all of them. And best of all, It’s 100% Free for my daydreamers (aka subscribers). Check out a live preview here or get access here.