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You can weld any two shapes in MTC but the most common use for welding is to weld words.  No one wants to cut out and place every letter of a word and learning how to weld the individual letters makes it easy to avoid that.

Under the Cherry Tree has an excellent tutorial explaining how to weld and join:

The difference between fonts and alphabets can be explained by describing the difference in the type of each file. Fonts (.ttf or .otf) are the same type of font file that already exists on your computer such as Times New Roman, Arial, etc. These fonts will be available for use within any system program that supports them, such as Microsoft Word, desktop publishing programs, and others.

An alphabet is in full-color and is made up of individual image files (.png). These image files can be imported, viewed, printed, and changed in a graphics editing software such as PhotoShop. You can download the .zip files of the alphabets which when unzipped will give you a folder with all of the individual graphics.

The online alphabet tool has replaced the "Try Me Now" tool from the old LetteringDelights site.  It allows you to easily type with full-colored alphabets and save the image as one word or phrase to insert into a document or project. To access the online alphabet tool do the following:

OTF (Open Type Font) are cross-platform (Mac and PC) fonts. They typically have a smaller file size which allows for a quicker download. They support expanded characters which allows for alternate characters and ligatures.

TTF (True Type Font) are similar to OTF fonts but they require separate files for each instance of the font. For example, a separate .ttf file is needed for bold, italics, or bold italics.

For most intent and purposes, it will make little difference to use one or the other file type when downloading fonts from LD.

To use a file in Silhouette Studio you can either open, merge, or import to My Library.  Silhouette Studio will open the following files:

• .gsd 
• .studio - this is the native format for Silhouette Studio
• .dxf - this is the file format LD packages with cut its and recommends
• .svg - this format is only available to open when you upgrade to Designer Edition
• .ttf and .otf - font files