Setting up your Creative Cutter on Mac
With the InVue Software
This guide will help to get your Inspiration Creative Cutter working with your Mac, using the InVue software.
Keep in mind, this guide is for Inspiration Creative Cutter users only.
Step 1: Installing InVue
(This link will take you to our online store to purchase the InVue Software as a Digital Download.)
Note that you may need to change the security settings on your Mac computer so that application installations from third party developers are enabled. To do this, please follow the steps below.
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>Click the apple icon in the top left corner of your screen and choose “System Preferences”.
>Select “Security & Privacy” from the System Preferences window.
>Select the “General” tab, and select the lock in the lower left corner to allow changes.
Enter your computer username and password, then select “Unlock.”
In the “Allow apps downloaded from:” section, select the radio button to the left of “Anywhere.”
Close the window. You can now install unsigned applications that you trust.
Step 2: Allowing Communication
USB 3 and Your Inspiration
USB 3 is a newer, faster standard of communication with USB ports. Our Inspiration cutter was released before the adoption of this new standard, and will not function while plugged directly into a USB 3 port. Most Apple computers built in 2012 or later come with only these ports, predominantly. To bypass this hardware incompatibility, you will need to purchase a third party USB 2.0 hub.
Most USB Hubs are USB 2.0 and should work. Some are USB 3.0 and will not work.
The following links are both working examples of a USB 2.0 hub:
Sabrent 4-Ports Aluminum USB 2.0 Hub
Either of these will work, as well as just about any USB 2.0 hub (just make sure it is not designed for use with USB 3).
Mac OSX 10.9 and 10.10 [Mavericks & Yosemite]
Apple has included a driver for devices similar to ours. Unfortunately, this driver blocks communication to our Inspiration Creative Cutter.
To circumvent this, you will need to run some commands in your Terminal application to disable this driver (you will need to know your administrator password for this).
To open your Terminal application, navigate in finder to /Applications/Utilities and then double click ‘Terminal’. You should get a white box that comes up – this is where we will be entering the following commands.
The first command is to change the active directory to where the driver is located:
The second command is the command that will actually disable the offending driver. After inputting this command, you will be asked for your system password. You will not be able to see that you are typing anything in – simply press return after you have entered it. If it was entered correctly, it will go down to the next line so that you can input the last command. If you typed the password wrong, the application will prompt you to retry.
The last command is simply to update the system with the modification date and time for this file.
After running this last command, you will need to restart your computer for the changes to finalize.
Once the computer has booted back up, you should then be able to send cuts to the Inspiration.
Some major software updates from Apple may cause you to need to repeat these steps, if after the update, the cutter is no longer recognized.
Mac OSX 10.11 and 10.12 [El Capitan & Sierra]
Apple has added new feature in 10.11 called System Integrity Protection (SIP), along with changing the location of their driver (new location is detailed in the commands, below).
SIP is a feature that does not allow ANY user, not even ‘Root’ to access or modify system files. The Apple FTDI driver that blocks our cutter from communicating is one of these files.
There is only one way to disable SIP:
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>Restart your Mac.
>Before OS X starts up, hold down Command-R and keep it held down until you see an Apple icon and a progress bar. Release the buttons once you see the progress bar. This boots you into Recovery mode.
>From the Utilities menu, select Terminal.
>At the prompt type exactly the following and then press Return:
>Terminal should display a message that SIP was disabled.
>From the Apple menu, select Restart.
From here, you will be able to perform the new steps (driver location has changed) below to disable the driver:
Apple has included a driver for devices similar to ours. Unfortunately, this driver blocks communication to our Inspiration Creative Cutter.
To circumvent this, you will need to run some commands in your Terminal application to disable this driver (you will need to know your administrator password for this).
To open your Terminal application, navigate in finder to /Applications/Utilities and then double click ‘Terminal’. You should get a white box that comes up – this is where we will be entering the following commands.
The first command is to change the active directory to where the driver is located:
The second command is the command that will actually disable the offending driver.
After inputting the previous command, you will be asked for your system password. You will not be able to see that you are typing anything in – simply press return after you have entered it. If it was entered correctly, it will go down to the next line so that you can input the last command. If you typed the password wrong, the application will prompt you to retry.
The last command is simply to update the system with the modification date and time for this file.
After running this last command, you will need to restart your computer for the changes to finalize.
Once the computer has booted back up, you should then be able to send cuts to the Inspiration.
If you wish to re-enable SIP on the system, you may boot back into recovery mode (first part of this set of instructions) replacing csrutil disable with csrutil enable. It is not necessary. All it does is prevent anyone, including a system administrator, from changing operating system files.
Some major software updates from Apple may cause you to need to repeat these steps, if, after the update, the cutter is no longer recognized. Please contact our support department if you are still seeing any issues after following these instructions.