Oversized Design Splitter

What it is

Oversized Design Splitter takes artwork that is bigger than your laser's work area — a one-metre spray stencil, a two-metre wall map, a life-size standee — and splits it into panels that each fit on the machine. Every panel gets an ID (A1, A2, B1: letter = row, number = column), seams stay clear of your design, and the downloaded ZIP cuts apart and goes back together exactly where the seams say.

The hard part of splitting is not the cutting, it is deciding where to cut. A seam through the middle of a letter, a face or a thin branch turns one clean job into two misaligned halves. This generator places seams the way a sign maker would: clear of letter openings, engraving and fine detail, through wide material where a joint has to hold, and never slicing a shape in half when a gap is within reach. Then it hands you the panels, a guide to put them back, and a kerf test so the seam comes out the width you planned.

How to use it

1. Import the artwork

1. Upload or drop an SVG or image anywhere in the window — several files at once (SVG up to 8 MB, images up to 16 MB), or pick one of 16 built-in samples in six groups: laser-ready SVG, bitmap, silhouette, flat color, gradient · text, and line art.
2. Laser-ready files load at their true size — the built-in 1-metre NO PARKING stencil is 1064.9 × 194.8 mm, far past the usable area of an xTool P2S. Files that state physical units (mm, cm, in) load 1:1 too; everything else uses the finished width you set.
3. The importer reads real-world files, not just tidy ones: broken outlines are closed, dashed cut lines are split into dashes, white canvas backgrounds are ignored, and an import note spells out what was recognized as cut lines, score lines and fill engraving, by color.

2. Set the size and your machine

1. Set the finished width (up to 6000 mm); the height follows the artwork.
2. Pick your xTool model — 11 presets from the P3 (915 × 458 mm) down to the F2 (115 × 115 mm) — or type a custom work area.Margin (default 5 mm) keeps every panel clear of the machine's edges and clamps; the usable area is shown underneath.
3. Panels that won't fit turn red on the canvas with their actual size, and the app proposes the fix: either the minimum rows × columns that fit, or one new seam through just the oversized panel.

3. Place and adjust seams

1. Seams are laid out automatically at the fewest panels that fit — turning the whole layout 90° when that saves a panel — and each seam is then nudged to the best spot near its grid line. The built-in stencil splits into two panels with the seam centred in the gap between A and R, so every letter stays whole.
2. Drag a seam to move it, select it to drag its ends free (ends snap to edges and other seams), drag in from the top or left ruler to add one, drag past the edge to delete. While a seam is selected, both panels show their size.
3. A seam that ends in empty space still cuts what it crosses; a seam left unconnected shows as grey dashes and isn't cut, with a note saying so.
4. Prefer brick-style offsets? Turn on Staggered to shift odd rows. Or set rows and columns by hand — the app tells you the minimum that fits when your numbers are too small.
5. An Explode slider spreads the panels apart so you can see every piece, and hovering a panel isolates it and says whether it fits, fits turned 90°, or won't fit.

4. Choose the joint and the fit

1. Joint: Butt (default, no tabs — join from the back), Finger, Puzzle, Dovetail or Wave, with tab width (8–80 mm), depth (4–50 mm) and pitch (up to 240 mm; the minimum follows the tab width, so tabs never overlap). Tabs only land where they fit whole: a crossing too narrow for a full tab stays a butt joint and says so, and tabs step aside so they never cut through engraving.
2. Fit: Press (−0.1 mm interference), Slide (+0.1 mm, default) or Loose (+0.3 mm) clearance, or a custom value from −0.5 to 1 mm; Press is sized for wood — the app suggests Slide for acrylic.
3. Kerf width (0–1 mm, default 0) offsets only the seams between panels, never the outline. Leave it at 0 when the kerf offset is on in your laser software; otherwise cut the included kerf test, measure, and enter the value.

5. Export

1. The Export view shows the overview file itself: every panel laid out by ID with red cut lines.
2. Click Export to download a ZIP named after your artwork (Unicode names kept), or Open in Studio to send the overview straight to xTool Studio.

Bonus: fabrication tips

Click Tips above the canvas: seven illustrated pages that follow the built-in stencil from import to a painted parking job — sizing, butt-joint panels, cutting and kerf, and three ways to join panels (duct tape on the back, screwed battens, or spraying side by side with no joining at all).

How the seams are placed

Seams follow the same judgment you would apply at the machine, in priority order:

• No slivers and no fragile thin strips:Positions that would cut out a loose fragment or leave a thin strip along an outline are only used when there is no alternative; fragments under 4 mm² are dropped and reported.
• Whole shapes stay whole: letter openings, engravings, motifs and color blocks are worth avoiding — the seam searches for a gap between them (it may travel a third of a cell to find one) and every shape it does cut costs score.
• Joints go through wide material, and get extra margin away from outlines so the seam line doesn't graze an edge.
• Photos and gradients count too:the artwork is sampled into a detail map, and seams detour around busy regions.
• Even panel sizes break ties, nothing else — a seam that saves your lettering is worth more than two equal halves.

Tab placement follows the same practical rules: each stretch of material gets as many whole tabs as fit, centered, sliding aside and flipping to the other side when a tab would sit on engraving, shrinking only as a last resort. Sections too narrow for any tab stay butt joints and are reported — never half-tabs or hook-shaped leftovers.

What you get

• ZIP (oversize-<name>.zip): an overview SVG with every panel laid out by ID, one SVG per panel (panels/, canvas = the panel plus 5 mm of clearance), an assembly guide and a kerf test (60 × 30 mm).
• All files are 1:1 in millimeters (width/height match the viewBox), cut lines in #FE0002 at 0.1 mm with no fill. Score lines keep their original colors, colored artwork exports as original-color fill layers, and anything that can't stay vector (photos, gradients, live text) is baked into the engraving bitmap at 254 DPI.
• The assembly guide is a document page (don't send it to the laser): the overview, every panel ID with its size and file name, the settings you cut with, and the joining steps for the joint you chose.
• Open in Studio sends the overview SVG, so you can select panels one by one in xTool Studio.

Butt seams have no tabs, so the two panels are joined from the back — or not at all: lay them edge to edge, weigh them down and spray. The Tips dialog walks through all three ways to join; Puzzle and Dovetail joints lock the panels together instead.

Specifications