Unweld in Cricut Design Space: Is it possible?

Can you unweld in Cricut? Quick answer, no.

Welding in Cricut Design Space is a permanent edit. Once you hit the weld, you *can* go back one step, which is great if weld was the last step.

But what if you are 20 steps past hitting the weld?

Sadly, Design Space has no unweld button. Are you scooped? Sort of, but not entirely.

The problem is not being able to unweld in Cricut

It’s understanding how to use three important tools in Design Space.

Knowing how and when to use the weld, attach, and group tool – you can avoid the welding woes.

Weld, Attach, Group in Cricut Design Space

Weld, attach and group are often used interchangeably in Cricut Design Space, and they can’t be because each tool has a designated and specific job to do.

Let’s break them down.

Weld in Cricut Design Space

Weld literally means to bond, fuse, or unite. Sounds permanent right? It is.

The weld tool in Cricut Design Space unites multiples layers together into one shape. The tool removes any overlapping cut lines, creating a unified shape.

The black stroke (border) around the shape is a cut line. In the top image, the cut lines are not welded. If you sent this image to cut the result would be:

Not what you want. Welding blends those in-between cut lines (image 1 above) to blend them together to make a seamless cut (image 2 above).

Weld will work on multiple layers at one time – even if the layers don’t overlap. This saves loads of time and effort when making patterns or complex cut-out designs.

Group in Cricut Design Space

Layers in a design typically go together, right?

By grouping layers you can resize, rotate, or move multiple layers on the canvas in one shot. But unlike weld or attach, these layers stay independent of one another.

Grouping is simply a way to edit or move multiple layers at the same time – and of course, organize the design in the layers panel. This doesn’t attach the groups onto the mat – that’s the attach tool which we’ll go over next.

When layers are grouped, they will all select together as show in the image below.

Grouped layers can be ungrouped.

Attach in Cricut Design Space

The attach tool is similar to taping layers together to hold them into place. The tool works in two ways:

1. Groups two or more Linetypes together on the mat
2. Attaching the design on the mat. This tells Cricut exactly where on the mat to cut, write, score, emboss.

Sending attached layers will align the design on the mat, exactly where Cricut should cut, score and write.

Send the same layers, unattached, and Cricut Design Space will make the decisions where to place the layers as efficiently as possible. For this design, it split into two mats because that is what Cricut *thinks* is the best way.

You can reverse attach by selecting unattach.

Three ways to use the weld tool

Attach and group are simple ways to edit, the real power is behind the weld tool which works wonderful with the slice tool – How to slice in Cricut Design Space.

Create shapes

Combine multiple shapes together to create a new shape – in this example we’ll make a heart with 2 free transformed circles, and 1 free transformed triangle. Layered and welded, it makes an adorable heart.

When you think of design as a layering of shapes, you can make almost anything. Go ahead, throw shapes on the canvas and experiment with welding shape combinations.

Unite shapes

In the How to Slice in Cricut Design Space, I showed how to weld multiple shapes to create a cutout design.

The layers do not need to overlap – and is a FABULOUS way to fast track a cut out design.

In the first image, each of the colored shapes on top of the butterfly are single layers. Once welded, the color of the shapes is united to one color. Once the shapes are welded you can slice in from a silhouette shape in one swift click – and make a complex cut-out design in minutes.

Join a script font

This is one of the most requested “how-to” for Design Space. Swirly script fonts make gorgeous cut designs – vinyl or paper. The trouble you’ll run into is there is a way to add, align, and group script fonts to cut as one single shape.

1. In Cricut Design Space hit the text tab on the left, and choose a script or cursive font. I’m using Groovy from Creative Market in this example.
2. By default, Design Space adds letter spacing which makes it so the letters do not meet up – which is what you need to cut out script letters. Using the arrow keys, adjust the letter space until it looks semi-good – it usually doesn’t completely do the trick. But get as close as possible.
3. Select the text and ungroup – then move each letter individually to align perfectly. For this example, increased the capital letter, aligned and nested the rest of the letters into the capital to visually look more aligned. There is no right way or wrong way here, whatever looks good to your eye.

1. The text is aligned and ready to cut – but do you see the black stroke between each letter. That’s going to cut, and that’s what you don’t want.
2. Select the text and hit weld – voila! This will remove those cut lines, and the path is now two words – Good + Vibe.

After the text is welded it is no longer text but a shape and cannot be edited.

Still crushed there is no way to unweld in Cricut?

The next best thing, and what I ALWAYS recommend: backup, backup, backup.

I promise you one thing; using a backup method will save your project one day, and it’s the only fix to not being able to unweld in Cricut.

1. Before you weld, save your work. By hitting save, Design Space saves the canvas as template (under Home –> My Projects).
2. Before hitting the weld, duplicate and hide all layers. Another way backup the layers for “just in case”.

It’s possible Cricut will add the ability to unweld in the future, but until then, backing up is your best friend.

Have questions? Let’s talk. Leave your question in the comments below.