Silhouette plotters - design options

Designing the pattern

The first thing I'll do is create myself a shape to work with. I'll create something like a flower petal by overlapping two circles and selecting the CUT option from the MODIFY menu - this will create a new shape that is the common part of the two overlapping circles.

Now we go to the DUPLICATE menu. In the first tab, at the very bottom, we have immediately available options to ROTATE COPIES - a choice of one, two, three or five. Selecting any of these options will create, respectively, one, two three or five copies of our shape rotated symmetrically about the pivot point within the circle.

What is a pivot point?
It's that black circle with a cross, which by default is located in the center of the selected shape or group of shapes. Its location can be changed by grabbing this point and dragging. Thus, you can achieve different effects by rotating our shape.

Item duplication

If these initial settings are not enough for us, we can go to the next menu tab and individually set how many copies we want to make, by what angle to rotate them, and whether subsequent copies should be in the same position or appear lower/higher/around the shape.

If you want all the copies to be distributed within the circle then, when setting the angle of rotation of each copy, you have to divide 360° by the total number of copies you want to have.
For example, if I want to have a total of 6 copies of my shape then each copy must be rotated 360°/6=60°.

Here it also matters where we set the pivot point.

6 copies of the shape, rotation angle 60°, pivot point at the bottom of the shape, subsequent copies in the same place. (There could actually be 5 copies because 6 overlap the original shape).

6 copies of the shape, angle of rotation 60°, pivot point below the shape, subsequent copies in the same place. (Again, there could be 5).

4 copies of the shape, angle of rotation 90°, pivot point at the center of the shape, more copies below the shape.

Degrees set without a mark rotate the object to the right, entering them with a "-" rotates the object to the left. The combination of all these settings allows you to create basically whatever comes to your mind.

Duplication on a path

The last option in the menu for duplicating an object on a path. Here we will start with the simplest path shape, which is a circle. First, we select the shape we want to deploy on the path and select SHOW CRAPPING HANDLE. It will change the appearance of our object and make it spread evenly on the selected path in the selected number of repetitions when moved to the path. This number can also be changed freely after the shape is placed on the path.

What can such an option be used for?
For example, you can create a shape with a frill - by merging the circles distributed around its perimeter, or simply make a decorative shape with holes on the perimeter, adding another larger one from the path outside.

Note that the shape used as a path turns into a line of black color after use and will not be cut out.

Of course, you can deploy not only circles. Any shape is suitable for this. The only limitation is your imagination.
Greetings and encourage you to try the above options.

elleth