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The Freehand tool provides a specialized method for creating embroidery designs through direct drawing, offering a rapid alternative to traditional node-by-node digitizing. By using a mouse or a digitizing tablet, users can produce sketch-style designs in just a few minutes.
The Freehand tool is an ideal medium for creating artistic and elegant embroidery. By capturing the direct movement and pressure of the hand, it allows creators to avoid the mechanical appearance sometimes associated with traditional digitizing. This capability ensures the final design reflects the artist's personal style and fluid craftsmanship.
The Freehand tool is highly effective for project personalization. It is particularly well-suited for converting children's drawings into unique embroidery. This feature allows for the creation of keepsakes, custom apparel, and gifts that preserve the spontaneous character of original hand-drawn artwork.
The tool operates similarly to a digital painting program, yet the result is a functional embroidery design. It supports various styles, including fills, columns, sfumato objects, and outlines, as well as specialized stitch types like pressure-sensitive columns.
Unlike other Studio tools that require precise manual placement of nodes and curves, the Freehand tool allows you to draw most Studio objects intuitively. Strokes are automatically converted into the selected embroidery style and can be edited on a node-by-node basis after conversion. The Freehand tool can be integrated with any other Studio tool during the design process.
The Freehand tool is compatible with various display modes (Normal, Vector, 3D, Flat, etc.) and supports any mouse or digitizing tablet compatible with your operating system.
*Tablet pen pressure sensitivity is available in Studio if the tablet uses a Wintab32.dll driver located in the Windows\System32 folder.
Before drawing, you must select an embroidery style. To access the selection, perform a long click (approximately 1 second) on the Freehand icon in the Tool Box using the mouse button or the tablet pen button.
The freehand styles panel will appear.
Click the icon of the desired style to activate it. You can also change the active style later using the combo box in the main control panel.
The styles utilized in the example above include:
When the Freehand tool is active, parameters for the selected style appear in the main control panel. Some settings, such as Color and After Stroke behavior, are common to all styles.
Color defines the thread color for objects created by the freehand strokes.
The After Stroke options determine the tool's behavior after each drawing action:
The Connect to previous object option (found in the splitter panel pop-up menu) automatically connects a new stroke to the preceding one with a smart connection object when enabled.
Manual Stitches are used for creating realistic fur, textures, or custom shading. Adjustable parameters include Minimum Length and Maximum Length of the stitch.
Outline-type styles (Outline, Sketch Outline, and Connection) allow for the adjustment of Stitch Length, Width (where applicable), and the embroidery Sample pattern.
For Column styles, users can adjust Minimum Width and Maximum Width. If a tablet is used, width varies according to pen pressure. If using a mouse, the Simulated Width combo box defines the stroke variation.
Example of a column with a simulated pressure effect on its width.
For Fill-type styles, the primary adjustable parameter during drawing is the Angle. Other detailed parameters are accessed via the Parameters window after exiting freehand mode. Carving and Opening objects must be added to an existing fill and are not stand-alone objects.
Note: Once freehand drawing is finalized, strokes are automatically converted into standard vector objects. Their specific properties can then be refined using the respective tabs in the Parameters window.