Save Designs for Giant Hoop-It-All™

Embird Embroidery Software Tutorial

1 - Run Embird and click "Editor" menu to switch to Editor window.

2 - Click the "Hoop Size" button, or select the "Options > Hoop Size" menu (Picture No. 1).

1. Select the "Options > Hoop Size" menu

3 - Click "Giant Hoop-It-All™" tab and choose the right hoop type for your sewing machine (Picture No. 2).

Confirm the hoop selection by clicking "OK" button.

Note: If you have not previously done so, verify the markings on your hoop to determine sections A, B, C, D, and E. See also the Section Definition in Hoop-It-All™ tutorial.

2. Choose the right hoop

4 - The empty hoop will be drawn in work area (Picture No. 3).

The center of the hoop may be grayed out. If so, this area is non-usable with your sewing machine without re-hooping. Also, some area around the hoop perimeter and the corners might be grayed out. This area is reserved for needle mechanism and/or is non-reachable by machine's needle.

You will see fuchsia, yellow, white and aqua bars around the hoop. These colors will be explained below. Also, there are all "child" hoops (sections) drawn, so that the working area looks very complicated. Child hoops represent the maximum design size that your sewing machine can sew out in one section within the Giant Hoop-It-All™. You can switch on/off each side of the hoop by depressing "Alt + Up", "Alt + Down", "Alt + Left" or "Alt + Right" key combination (also accessible via "View > Hoops In Giant Hoop-It-All™" menu). You can turn them all on/off at once using the "Alt + Ins" key combination.

All sides of the hoop work like a magnet. If you turn off some side, it stops "attracting" designs unless you turn it on again. This way you can prepare designs side-after-side, starting with right side and ending with top side. All designs belonging to some side will be drawn in that side's color (i.e. fuchsia, yellow, white or aqua), but only when the side is off. This way you can check to which side does the particular object belong - turn all sides off (by depressing "Alt + Ins" keys simultaneously) and you will see.

3. Notice hoop sections

5 - Let's start with the right side of the hoop. Turn all other sides off using commands in "View > Hoops In Giant Hoop-It-All™" menu (Picture No. 4).

4. Turn ON only RIGHT side of the hoop

6 - You can see in work area that only the right side of the hoop is ON now (Picture No. 5).

5. Notice sections on the RIGHT side of the hoop

7 - Merge the designs into the work area. Use "File > Merge" menu to merge a file (Picture No. 6). For more information on merging files, please read the Open Designs for Giant Hoop-It-All™ tutorial.

6. Merge files

8 - Move the design to the right side of the hoop (Picture No. 7).

7. Move the design to the RIGHT side of the hoop

9 - As you can see in Picture No. 7 above, the design exceeds the size of child hoop (section, which represents the maximum design size that the embroidery machine is capable of sewing out). Notice the red rectangle drawn around design icon at the right side of the screen - it indicates that object is out of section. The design must be manually split in such a way that each part of the design would fit into one of the five overlapping child hoops (Picture No. 8). More information regarding the splitting is available in Interactive Free-Hand Splitting tutorial.

Note: It is possible to skip following steps, and continue in step 13. Embird can automatically split the design in such a way that each object fits some section. However, sometimes it is better to split the design manually to obtain optimal result.

8. Split design

10 -  Repeat the splitting process until every object fits into one of the five child hoops (sections) (Picture No. 9). Sometimes it might be necessary to change the order of objects. Drag and drop objects at Objects Order Bar, so that their order is correct (Picture No. 9).

9. The first part fits red section

11 - When you are finished with the splitting, turn off the right side of the hoop (by depressing "Alt + Right" keys simultaneously). All objects belonging to the right side should be drawn in fuchsia color now (Picture No. 10). In case some objects are not drawn in this color yet, it means that they do not fit into child hoop and you must split them again (press "Alt + Right" keys simultaneously to turn on the right side of the hoop and then repeat the step 9). Designs placed in the middle of the hoop in gray non-usable area cannot be saved and you must either delete them, or skip them during the saving process.

10. All design parts fit to sections on the RIGHT hoop side

12 - Turn on the following side of the hoop (e.g. the bottom side) and repeat the steps 7 to 11.

13 - When you are finished with all four sides of the Giant Hoop-It-All™ hoop, click "File > Save As" menu to save the all design parts to files on your disk. Specify the format and the file name in the dialog boxes which appear on the screen. Each design part will be saved into a separate file on the disk.

Note: Embird will automatically append two characters to the file name of each part (Picture No. 11). These characters indicate the hoop section which belongs to the part, e.g. "web_RE.hus" means that the part should be sewn out at the "Right" side in "E" section. This is very helpful during sewing, or if you want to re-open these files in Editor - see also the Open Designs for Giant Hoop-It-All™ tutorial.

11. List of saved files

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