How to make a rhinestone template

You may want to have a look at this topic.

Cheers!

I will assume that you will do the actual template manufacture either on a plotter/cutter or on an etching machine.

For outline  or hollowed out designs (like hollowed out letters of a word), place the text as large and as centered (in your design) as you want. With the text selected, left click on the 'X' in the color well and right click on the black color. This makes the 'Fill' color of the text to be 100% transparent, while the outline of the text is solid black.

Next, create a symetrical circle (hold down the Ctrl key while making an elipse) to be 0.2mm to 0.4mm larger diameter than the stone that you will be applying. i.e.: for an SS10 stone, (average diameter which is 2.8mm) you would need a 3.0-3.2mm circle. You will need to make many copies of that circle, as these are the circles that get cut out of the template material, for the stone(s) to drop in.

There are several ways to obtain multiple circle copies, one is selecting the circle and hitting the '+' key on the numeral pad. (Now you have two circles). Select both circles and again hit the '+' key (Now you have four circles). etc. Or you can duplicate once, so that you have two circles and then select both of the circles and open the Blend docker. From the blend docker, you can make many circles all at once (Click on Help to learn about Blend).

With the Blend tool, not only can you generate lots of the circles, but you can also have them automatically placed on the lettering outlines. You can adjust the number of circles up/down and re-apply, thus adjusting the spacing between the circles. Once you have the circles placed as good as possible, on the text outline, you may want to select the whole text (with the circles) and break the blend apart, then ungroup the whole design. Once that is done, you can add/delete/move individual circles to obtain the best appearing design. At this point, you can now select the black outline of the letters, that you created at the beginning of this design, and delete it. You should be left with a design of circles, forming the text word. This is ready to send to the output device.

For a solid fill of stones within a boundary, you need to build a field of circles and then use the envelope tool to encapsulate the pattern of circles within an outline. Again, you would have to modify that (using edit envelope fill) to remove any stones that are on the boundary and partially cut. Once you are satisfied with the design, it is ready to send to the output device.

There are a couple of macros out there (Macromonster.com, for one) that can do alot of the stone (circle) layout for you, but you still have to create the overall design and get it ready for output to the device that will cut the template.

EDIT:

While I was typing this, Adrian put up a simple answer. As you read, both this reply, and the thread Adrian pointed to, you will see how Rhinestone templates can be generated, using CorelDRAW.