From a programmer's perspective, you can think of Cuttle as a direct manipulation vector editor (like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator) that can be driven with parameters and JS code where you need it.
Unlike my previous research projects, this is a commercial startup mostly catering to laser cutting small businesses, though you can use it for anything where you want a 2D vector editor + some programmatic capabilities.
I'll try to answer questions that come up in this HN thread.
Thank you for sharing your work Hannah! Very cool stuff!
Cuttle is v cool, congratulations! I had previously seen Apparatus and liked it, so I can clearly see the genetic resemblance now ;)
I’m wondering how many of you are on the team, and does it actually support you as a business yet? Even for a quite niche-y app Cuttle deserves to be better known, and higher-priced, imo.
A Cuttle project is — behind the scenes — a program. Each “component” is a function. “Modifiers” are functions that take input geometry (and parameters) and use JS code to create arbitrary output geometry. All of this code can be live edited.
At the same time you can do arbitrary “drawing” with a bezier pen tool and move/transform shapes. In this case you are essentially using the canvas drag-and-drop to manipulate literals in the program.
But fundamentally a Cuttle project is a program and the Cuttle Editor is an IDE that looks like a vector editor on the surface.
Because of this I’m not sure how much of Cuttle could be grafted onto a program whose architecture is more rooted as an editor of static vector graphics. I do know that Inkscape has some “live effects” which are similar to Cuttle’s “live” modifiers.
Thanks for the suggestion! Yes, we should do this. I've been seeing more and more people use Cuttle for 3D printing (exporting a DXF, then bringing that into another program to extrude and output a STL).
I was briefly a member of a makerspace with a laser cutter - and it was brilliant! The ratio of effort to results was far better than any other CNC tools I’ve used.
But then COVID and moving house put an end to that. I’d love to recreate something similar at home - but at a budget.
Does anyone have a low cost laser cutter that actually works? It seems like there’s an increasing number of Chinese ones out there, but quality and capabilities are unclear.
On a free account you can create up to 5 projects in the Cuttle Editor (and you can delete them if you want to create more...)
We don't laser cut anything for you. You can download your project as an SVG file (or DXF, etc) which you can then send to a laser cutter hooked up to your computer.
The product is designed for people who have access to a laser cutter, e.g. at home or at a makerspace.
From a programmer's perspective, you can think of Cuttle as a direct manipulation vector editor (like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator) that can be driven with parameters and JS code where you need it.
Unlike my previous research projects, this is a commercial startup mostly catering to laser cutting small businesses, though you can use it for anything where you want a 2D vector editor + some programmatic capabilities.
I'll try to answer questions that come up in this HN thread.
Thank you for sharing your work Hannah! Very cool stuff!
I’m wondering how many of you are on the team, and does it actually support you as a business yet? Even for a quite niche-y app Cuttle deserves to be better known, and higher-priced, imo.
At the same time you can do arbitrary “drawing” with a bezier pen tool and move/transform shapes. In this case you are essentially using the canvas drag-and-drop to manipulate literals in the program.
But fundamentally a Cuttle project is a program and the Cuttle Editor is an IDE that looks like a vector editor on the surface.
Because of this I’m not sure how much of Cuttle could be grafted onto a program whose architecture is more rooted as an editor of static vector graphics. I do know that Inkscape has some “live effects” which are similar to Cuttle’s “live” modifiers.
If you are interested in Cuttle’s architecture, I did a one hour walkthrough on this interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2el-85vG-IU
But then COVID and moving house put an end to that. I’d love to recreate something similar at home - but at a budget.
Does anyone have a low cost laser cutter that actually works? It seems like there’s an increasing number of Chinese ones out there, but quality and capabilities are unclear.
> with an exceptionally shallow learning curve
I'm used to long learning time to incorrectly described as steep, but I haven't seen shallow used as short.
Time to officially deprecate steep and shallow, and use short and long instead.
Both steep and shallow work in this context
Should've been time/skill not skill/time.
Is it normal in the states? And is it full of cool projects?
We don't laser cut anything for you. You can download your project as an SVG file (or DXF, etc) which you can then send to a laser cutter hooked up to your computer.
The product is designed for people who have access to a laser cutter, e.g. at home or at a makerspace.