Help › Making designs

Designs and pieces

A design is a list of pieces, sewn from the top of the list down. One DST holds the whole design.

#The three kinds of piece

The empty hoop shows the same three as buttons (Choose artwork, Type some text, Open a DST). Dropping a file on the hoop adds it too.

Click a piece in the list to change its settings on the left.

#Placing pieces

• A new piece goes centred under the others, 1/4 in below.
• Drag a piece on the hoop to move it. Its centre snaps into line with the others; hold Option to place it freely.
• Arrow keys nudge the selected piece 0.5 mm (Shift: 5 mm, Option: 0.1 mm). Delete removes it.
• Line up centres every piece on one line, top to bottom, 1/4 in apart.
• ⌘Z undoes, ⇧⌘Z redoes (on a Mac).
• The eye on a piece switches it off: it stays in the design (faded on the hoop, kept in the design file) but isn't sewn.

#Sizes

For artwork, set the size in inches or pick a preset:

Proportions are always kept. Text is sized by the height of its capital letters (see Lettering).

#Sewing order

• Pieces sew in list order. The arrows on a piece move it up or down.
• Each piece is finished, tied off and trimmed before the next. The machine jumps to the next piece; it never sews across.
• A piece that starts on the thread the one before it ended on carries on without a colour change: a name in the logo's navy shares the navy stop.
• When another order would save colour changes (two navy lines with a red logo between them), the app says so. Reorder sews them in that order. Pieces that overlap keep their order, since the later one lies on top.
• Inside a piece, the engine plans its own order. See How it digitizes.

#Where the machine starts

The DST is centred on the middle of the whole design, which is where the machine starts. The hoop's sewing area is drawn as a dashed line round the design (a circle for a round hoop), centred on that point. Each piece is digitized exactly as it would be on its own.

#Placed DSTs

• A placed DST keeps its stitches exactly as the file has them.
• DST files don't say which colours they use, so each stop shows in a stand-in colour until you pick its thread under Threads. PES, JEF and VP3 files carry colours, and those are used.
• A placed DST can be scaled 50-200%, but scaling stitches changes their density. Keep within 90-110% and test sew.
• Its layers are its stops: switch off a stop (a customer file's background fill, say), drag stops into another order, or show one on its own. See Views, layers and the player.
• Common uses: add a name to a customer's DST; add a name to a PES and save it as a DST.

#Design files (.design)

• Save DST also writes NAME.design: every piece's settings and position, with the artwork and DST files inside it.
• Open it later (double-click, or drop it on the hoop), change it and save again. It saves as NAME_v2; files are never overwritten.
• Text needs its font installed on the computer that opens it. The included fonts are always there.
• The fabric is saved in the design. A design saved before v0.20 opens as twill, sewn as before.

#Names from a list

For a team or staff order: one DST per name, every name in the same place on the same design.

1. Add the other pieces (logo, number, slogan) and one text piece for the name, set the way the names should look (font, height, colour).
2. On that text piece, switch on Take the text from a names list. Paste the names one per line, or Open CSV….
   • More than one column (name and number): separate with commas or tabs.
   • Switch on First line is column names if the first line is a heading.
   • Each list text piece picks its column, so a name piece and a number piece can both come from the list.
3. Long names: set Fit within (it starts at the width of the widest other piece, so names stay inside the logo's width) and No smaller than. A name wider than the box gets smaller letters, just under the width, down to that height. One still too wide is flagged.
4. Step through the names with the arrows over the hoop. Each is digitized and checked as you go.
5. Save all N names writes a folder NAME - names in the saved designs folder (the hoop says which name it is on, "Saving 3 of 40 names"):
   • a DST, preview and report per name, named after it;
   • Roster.csv and Roster.txt: every name in list order with file, check, size, letter height used, stitches, run time, warnings and the needle order;
   • the design file with the list in it;
   • rejected/ for any name that fails a check. Blank lines are skipped.

Limits: there is no condensed lettering yet (long names only get smaller), and every name sews from one place (the piece's middle).