Curved Text Generator

What it is

Curved Text Maker sets a name or a phrase along an arc, a circle, a spiral or a wave and welds the letters into one outline you can cut on a laser — cake toppers, arched name signs, plaques, wreath rings, coasters. Download a 1:1 millimeter SVG, or an STL / 3MF to 3D-print it.

The hard part of curved text is keeping it in one piece. On a curve, letters pull apart on the outside and pinch together on the inside, so some stop touching and others hang on by a hairline. Curved Text Maker tells you how many pieces your design will cut into, and Auto connect joins them into a single part.

How to use it

1. Pick a font

1. Upload a TTF / OTF / WOFF file, or search the built-in fonts by name.
2. Click a font to use it. Recommended fonts are the ones whose letters join on their own (tagged Joined); the rest are under More (tagged Separate).

189 fonts are built in: 16 joined and 173 more.

2. Type your text and choose a path

1. Type up to 200 characters.
2. Choose the Shape: Arc, Circle, Spiral or Wave, then set its size. A spiral coils a long phrase into a disc; on a circle, Clockwise puts the text on the outside and Counter on the inside.
3. Set the Font size (4–80 mm). Letter spacing, word spacing and Flip text are in the same card. If the path is too short, the app tells you how many characters were cut off.

3. Arch it

1. With Arc, the text is centred automatically. Arch up sits outside the top of the circle, Arch down inside the bottom — both read upright.
2. Curve by Angle (10–360°, default 90°) keeps the same arch shape whatever you type and works out the diameter for you. Curve by Diameter (20–2000 mm) matches the arc to a round object instead, and shows the angle the text covers.

4. Cut it as one piece

1. Here the font is switched to Offside, tagged Separate: its letters don't touch.
2. With Auto connect off (the default), the Connections card warns how many gaps or thin joints there are and how many pieces the text will cut into. Turn it on and it adds links along the baseline and bridges any leftover fragment — here 16 links, and Pieces drops to 1. Link width defaults to 1 mm and goes from 0.5 to 5 mm.

Check it in 3D

1. Switch to 3D preview to see the part at its real thickness. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom.
2. Try it on wood, leather, mirror or red acrylic. The surface only changes the preview, never the file.

6. Export

1. The Export view shows the exact SVG that will be downloaded — red cut lines, file name and size.
2. Download as SVG for laser cutting, or STL / 3MF to 3D-print it. Open in Studio always uses the SVG.
3. Click Export.

Bonus: a whole batch of names

1. Switch Mode to Batch.
2. Type one entry per line (up to 200), or upload a .txt file. Every entry gets the same font and path — here each name is arched on its own arc — and they are laid out on one sheet.
3. The 3D preview is off in batch mode; the 2D design and Export views show the whole sheet.

How the connections are made

Two letters count as joined only when they overlap along a joint at least as wide as the link width (or half the stroke, for thin fonts). With Auto connect on, where they don't:

• A baseline link runs along the path from the last stroke of one letter to the first stroke of the next, 1 mm tall by default, on the letter side of the baseline — the way sign makers join script lettering, so it reads as part of the script.
• A straight bridge connects whatever is still loose (an i-dot with Connect dots off, punctuation, a letter with nothing near the baseline): the smallest piece is joined to its nearest neighbor by the shortest bridge, and this repeats until one piece is left. The method follows Xu, Kaplan & Mi, Computer-Generated Papercutting (Pacific Graphics 2007).

The 1 mm default follows common laser-cutting guidance: features thinner than about 1 mm break easily.Thickness (0–5 mm) widens the whole outline instead, which also closes small gaps and strengthens thin joints.

What you get

• SVG — 1:1 in millimeters (width and height in mm), one cut path in #FE0002 with a 0.1 mm stroke and no fill, artboard tight around the outline. With Score letter edges on, a second path in #2366FF traces where letters overlap so each letter stays readable; it comes before the cut path, so score at low power first, then cut. Named after your text, e.g. curved-text-Happy-Birthday-Emma.svg.
• STL (binary) and 3MF — the same outline extruded to your depth (1–20 mm, default 3 mm), in millimeters, watertight.
• Batch — one SVG sheet (curved-text-batch-8.svg); STL / 3MF give one file per entry in a zip.

Specifications

Good to know

• Texture fonts cut into many pieces.Dot-matrix, striped, bubble and sketch-style fonts are drawn from hundreds of separate shapes; Auto connect bridges up to 200 fragments and tells you when there are more. Pick a Joined font when you want one piece.
• Single-line (engraving) fonts can't be cut — they have no closed outlines. The app tells you on the canvas.
• Characters a font doesn't have are skipped, and the app lists them — including lowercase in caps-only fonts.
• Thickness and Score letter edges don't mix: score lines need the original letter edges, so turning one on turns the other off.
• Your fonts stay on your computer.Uploaded fonts never leave the browser and last for this session only.
• No kerf compensation.The SVG is the nominal shape; set an offset in your laser software if you need one.
• Undo / redo, reset, and an English or Chinese interface that follows your platform language.