Wow, StixCut 1.0.17 is out only a little over two weeks after the last release. It feels like much longer! This update grew around a flood of bug reports, questions, and feature requests from the community, and I tried to fit in as many of them as I could.
A little development backstory: at the same time, I was rebuilding the Windows core. StixCut started as a native Mac app, and my first Windows approach tried to reuse much of its Swift core. That turned out to be the wrong fit for a responsive native Windows interface, so I replaced that core with C#. Honestly, talking to the PixCut S1 is not the hardest part of StixCut. Building a full, responsive, feature-rich interface around it is! This release finishes that transition, and I hope the Windows app is more stable than ever.
Layers now work the way people expected
A StixCut sticker is closer to a group in a design app than a single flat object. It has one raster Image layer and any number of vector Cut layers. It can even have no Cut layers when you just want something like a header to print without cutting.
In 1.0.17, the Layers panel treats those pieces independently. Click the Image layer and you can move, resize, rotate, or adjust the artwork without changing its cut paths. Click a Cut layer and you can transform or edit that specific path. Select neither layer and the whole sticker moves and resizes together. If your sticker has multiple cut lines, the Layers panel is your friend. This also makes templates much easier to understand and edit. (Thanks Tommy & others for requesting a better experience!)
StixCut is becoming a design tool, too
I originally built StixCut to take finished artwork from apps such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Affinity, then lay it out for the PixCut S1. One semi-surprise was how many people wanted more ways to create inside StixCut. So 1.0.17 adds the first real set of in-app design tools.
The Shape Designer can create text or one of 18 adjustable shapes. Who needs a basic triangle sticker? I am not sure, but you can make one! More usefully, you can add any designed shape as a Cut layer and crop an existing image into a star, heart, cloud, cog, or something else entirely. Pair it with Crop to Cut Line when you want the sheet background to show cleanly around the result.
The new Draw Path tool lets you sketch a custom cut path with the mouse or place individual points, then close and refine it in the Cut Path Editor. The Image panel also adds live Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, and Hue adjustments.
Inches, millimeters, and more languages
Not everyone enjoys my strange mix of metric and imperial units. Settings > General > Display Units now offers Inches, or Millimeters, or the Default behavior. The choice applies to all settings, transform controls and rulers. Default keeps the original mixed behavior for weirdos like me. The manual explains the new Display Units setting. (Thanks to many of you for the push!)
StixCut now also includes Italian, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. A warning here: these are machine translations and have not been heavily tested or read by a native speaker. I only speak English plus a little broken Spanish, so please send me corrections if something is wrong, clipped, or just sounds strange. There is a very real chance some of it is weird. (Thanks Eduardo for the idea!)
Smaller changes that add up
- Arrow-key nudging makes precise placement much easier. This should have been there all along. (Thanks Joseph!)
- Snap to Guides can now be turned off, and snapping targets the safety margin instead of the sheet edge. See Snap Guides.
- A visible, configurable Safety Margin shows the default 2 mm cut-safe area. You can reduce it in Settings if you accept the risk, but cuts near the edge, especially perf-cuts, can be less reliable.
- Overcut Corners extends kiss-cut paths slightly past sharp exterior corners, helping the PixCut S1 make cleaner points instead of rounding the turn. (Thanks Luke!)
- I changed the whole order of kiss-cuts and perf-cuts on sheets that use both. I could nerd out here, but hopefully it just means more accurate stickers.
- Auto-Pack Sheet now uses smarter rotation to fit more stickers. It is a bit slower, which is the tradeoff. Let me know whether you prefer this approach or the previous faster, simpler packer.
- SVG cut paths now prompt for a physical size when imported, so getting an exact size should finally be much less complicated. See SVG Cut Import. (Thanks to so many of you for calling this out!)
- Windows now has much better on-device Remove Background results using a machine-learning model, with no cloud upload required.
You found the bugs I could not
This release fixes so many real-world problems. Who knew multiple sheet copies could fail over Bluetooth? You did. Did I realize background images were printing at reduced opacity? Nope, but you did. A sticker's rectangular bounds could also trigger an out-of-bounds error even when its actual cut path fit. Windows could reject a custom 4 x 7 Print Only media type. Opening or sharing documents could retain the wrong background or stale sticker state.
These are exactly the kinds of bugs I cannot find without people using StixCut on real projects, with real files, and telling me when something feels wrong. Our small community has been incredibly helpful, and 1.0.17 is much better because of it. (Thanks Steven, Becca, Joseph, Mairin, Tommy, Eduardo, Luke, Alex, Petra, David, Amanda, Twyla, and any others I missed for the bug reports!)
You can read the complete list in the 1.0.17 release notes, and the new StixCut manual is now available on the web and from the app's Help menu.
What comes next
Automation and batch-printing improvements are still on the roadmap. But I also want to spend some time doing the fun part: making stickers, building templates, recording videos, and sharing StixCut with the world. I hope you will do the same!
-Dan
Choose your platform ->