Attach Basics – How to Attach in Cricut Design Space?

Learn how to use the Attach feature in Cricut Design Space and what it is used for.

If you are just beginning your Cricut adventure, you will soon realize that Attach will be one of your best friends. Let’s find out what Attach is used for and how to Attach in Cricut Design Space.

What is Attach in Cricut Design Space?

That is a good question. In the real world, Attach and Weld mean the same thing for the most part. So why are they separate on Cricut Design Space?

Basically its because they have two completely separate jobs.

Think of Attach as either a paper clip or tape. We don’t necessarily want it to be permanent, but we want it to stay put for now.

For instance, if I put the image above on the left in Cricut Design Space Canvas and I want it to cut out exactly like that, you would think it would do that, right? Wrong.

Cricut sees each item in that pic as separate and wants to cut them out separately and in a rather random pattern on the cutting mat. The picture on the right is the way it looked when I clicked “Make It” in Cricut Design Space. What a mess!

But, if we Attach the design before we click “Make It”, it looks much better. Look at the picture below. That’s more like it.

But we can Detach it as well, remember, this isn’t permanent. So lets say we want to pull out one of those items to use by itself, we can do that since it’s not permanently put together.

Next question…How ?

How to Attach in Cricut – Video Tutorial

If you would rather watch it done, like me…check out the video tutorial.

How to Attach in Cricut Design Space?

Attaching in Cricut Design Space is much easier than understanding what it is or does. The Attach button is found in the bottom right hand corner. If you don’t have anything on the canvas and highlighted, it will be more of a gray color. When you have a design highlighted the Attach icon will become darker indicating that you can use that feature on this design. See how the Contour icon is harder to see? That is how the Attach icon will look if you can’t use the Attach button.

Once you have a design and you are ready to “tape” it down on your paper, just highlight the entire design and click Attach. That’s it.

When you wan to Detach it, highlight the entire design and click Detach. It’s the some button.

You can Attach as many or as few pieces as you want. Highlight the entire design or just one or two pieces.

To only attach one or two pieces of a larger design, click on one piece you want to attach and then press and hold the shift key and then click on the other pieces you want to attach together. Watch the video above to see how I do this.

Are Attach and Group the Same?

No, although they may seem like they are the same, they do completely different things as well.

Imagine you are working on a collage and you want to tape some pictures together so you can move them all to the right place at the same time. That is “Group”. But once you click Un-group, each of the pieces or pictures are separate again. This makes it really easy to resize all the objects at the same time, and yet they remain separate images. Make sense?

Once you are done moving and arranging, you will want to attach them so that Cricut can Cut or Print & Cut the design correctly, just like you designed it to be used.

Ok, that is how to Attach in Cricut Design Space. Go try it and if you have problems, email me and we can chat. You can always join my Facebook group – Addicted to Cricut – and we can chat there as well.

Happy Crafting!