In this tutorial, we will show you the Center of Rotation feature, which is available in Silhouette Studio® Designer Edition and higher. Normally, when you rotate an object by dragging the little green circle on the bounding box, it assumes your center of rotation is in the center of the design. This is the point your object rotates around.

With Designer Edition or higher, you can change the center of rotation for freehand rotation. Use the shortcut letter “O” to make your center of rotation visible. “O” will toggle this rotation point on and off.

You can set the default to show the center of rotation or not in Preferences > Defaults tab.

Click and drag the center of rotation crosshairs to another point on your design, and that will become the center of rotation for the freehand rotation.

How else will this tool help you? Let’s go to another page, draw an oval, and open the Replicate panel. When you rotate 5 copies at the bottom of the panel with the center of rotation in the oval’s middle, you get a shape like this.

We will drag a copy of the first oval down here and move the center of rotation to its bottom edge. Now when we choose rotate 5 copies, it gives a completely different design.

This can be a lot of fun choosing a variety of shapes and different rotation points…