Thanks to Custom Crops' Pink Tuesday sale, I was able to obtain a copy of Cricut Design Studio for only $20. I have Sure Cuts A Lot, and I was interested in using the additional features Design Studio offers for Cricut cartridges, especially welding.
The first thing I noticed, and I have seen evidence of it across the internet, is that Design Studio is a little glitchy. They have a new version to download off the website, which I had to do immediately after installing (and then uninstalling) the software so that all of the updates would show up. That being said, after I did that, all of the cartridges showed up properly, and the software worked smoothly. I do find it mildly irritating that Provocraft will only allow you to use the software on one computer at a time.
The interface for Design Studio is very similar to Sure Cuts A Lot, and therefore is very easy to use if you have used that software. I am not sure which came first, but one is clearly modeled after the other.
As far as the functionality is concerned- I love it! One of my major complaints with the Cricut has always been "guesstimating" the size and placement of the elements. The sizing is so counter-intuitive - one example that comes to mind is the pie on Simply Charmed. The piece of pie will cut at about twice the size as the full pie on the same setting, because the cherry on top of the full pie will technically take it up to the dial height. On Design Studio, you see it as it would sit on the mat, so you never have to guess at what the finished product will be. I also love being able to move elements around on the mat to take best advantage of the paper, and of course I love being able to stack elements like I did on the cards above.
I bought a Cricut expression on Ebay, and should be taking delivery of it any time now. I think the Expression will really allow Design Studio to shine- imagine all you could cut on a 12x12 page if you could drag and drop elements where you want them! You could even do a whole layout at once that way if you wanted to use the negative images from your cuts.
So in all, my initial impression of Design Studio is favorable. I love having the same flexibility with my cartridges that I do with my true-type fonts and SVGs on Sure Cuts A Lot.
