Where they come from
Silhouette Studio, the software that drives Silhouette cutting machines such as the Cameo and Portrait, saves your work as a .studio3 file. Designs bought from the Silhouette Design Store arrive in the same format. The format is Silhouette's own and isn't published, so other programs can't open it directly.
The name dates from Silhouette Studio 3, but the format inside has changed since. Files saved by Studio 4 and 5 start with the marker silhouette05;. Files saved by older versions start with silhouette04; and are laid out differently.
What's inside
The file is a set of sections one after another. People who have studied the format, notably the open studio3svg project, have mapped the important ones:
- The document: the page size, the mat, and every object on the page. Each object's outline is stored as Bézier curves in millimetres, already placed on the page. This is what a converter needs.
- Properties for each object: line colour, fill colour, the layer it sits on, and settings for effects.
- Text: the words and font, plus the outline of every letter, so the letters can be cut even without the font.
- Pictures placed for print and cut, kept in their own section.
- A preview picture that Silhouette Studio draws when saving, which file browsers can show as a thumbnail.
- The last cut job and other settings, partly scrambled and not needed for converting.
The outlines aren't encrypted or compressed in ordinary files, which is why a browser can read them. Silhouette could change the format in a future version, as it has before.
How to open one
- Silhouette Studio (free Basic Edition) opens it on Windows and macOS.
- Cutpeek (this site) shows the cut lines, sizes and layers in any modern browser and exports SVG, without installing anything or uploading the file.
.studio3 vs .studio
Older Silhouette Studio versions saved .studio files. Current versions save .studio3. Cutpeek reads .studio3 files from Studio 4 and 5; it doesn't read the older .studio format.