I have to Wonder....

[WildWestDesigns]

Is my education in embroidery so dated in some respects, especially toward terminology.

I was looking at the software Monogram Wizard and they are using terms like "Fonts" and "Alphabets" interchangeably. They are two totally different terms with regard to embroidery. They are either Fonts or they are Alphabets, can't be both.

Have those two terms been used so much in that manner that they now mean that (don't even get my started on my rant about "Begging the Question" and then following that statement with a question)?

 

[J Hill Designs]

I'd say they arent interchangeable...

theres the english alphabet, the spanish alphabet, the sanskrit alphabet,

then theres the times new roman font, the arial font, the brush script font...

 

[Gino]

Think that's bad............

I remember when we sang..... Don we now our gay apparel.....Fa la la la la la la la la and it wasn't laughed or snickered at. Whole new meaning and I don't get it ??

 

[HulkSmash]

Think that's bad............

I remember when we sang..... Don we now our gay apparel.....Fa la la la la la la la la and it wasn't laughed or snickered at. Whole new meaning and I don't get it ??

you would

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I'd say they arent interchangeable...

theres the english alphabet, the spanish alphabet, the sanskrit alphabet,

then theres the times new roman font, the arial font, the brush script font...

Oh, that's going on a different line of thinking.

In terms of embroidery, a font (even if it's a font that only your embroidery program uses) is lettering that you use your keyboard with. "Live update" etc just be typing on your keyboard. In other words, just like a font in any other program.

Now with alphabets, in terms of embroidery, are actually individual embroidery designs that happen to look like an "A", "B", "C" etc. In order to spell "cat" for instance, you have to manually import the "c" pattern, "a" pattern, and "t" pattern, manually arrange the spelling, kerning etc. It would be along the lines of text in a vector file that has been converted to curves (outlines) and you want to edit the text or change the spelling on the now vector objects that were text objects before.

 

[Bigdawg]

I think that when a font becomes ineditable, it ceases to be a font. So I think that, as you described above, the usage of fonts and alphabets is correct. I can say "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" out loud and it is the alphabet... no font involvement at all. So the letters you describe sold by themselves are, IMHO, parts of an alphabet...

 

[binki]

What I see with different embroidery software is the same thing referred to with different terms. It must be a marketing thing to either trademark or brand a product and to keep you from jumping ship to a competitor.

I only have 6 years of experience in machine embroidery and I saw the difference right away.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

What I see with different embroidery software is the same thing referred to with different terms. It must be a marketing thing to either trademark or brand a product and to keep you from jumping ship to a competitor.

I only have 6 years of experience in machine embroidery and I saw the difference right away.

That's really common place. You see it with vector software as well.

Step fill, tatami fill, column input, input a, fusion fill. Various names for some of the digitizing names from just 3 commercial embroidery software.

 

[James Burke]

I utterly hate, and refuse to use the word FONT.

I prefer to use the word "typeface" or sometimes "letter style". There is (or at least used to be) a difference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface

 

[binki]

We like to use our trademarked name, 'that letter looking thing' with our customers.

It is frustrating that there isn't a governing body that covers this crap so we all speak the same language. I can only go by what our software calls it. That is pretty much all I can attribute my knowlege unless I get with someone who uses a different software.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

We like to use our trademarked name, 'that letter looking thing' with our customers.

It is frustrating that there isn't a governing body that covers this crap so we all speak the same language. I can only go by what our software calls it. That is pretty much all I can attribute my knowlege unless I get with someone who uses a different software.

What software do you use?

 

[Stagecraft]

James Burke has the right idea...
To be absolutely correct, the term "font" is the name of the tin box containers that were used to hold letter ingots back in the day of the traditional typesetter...as in pulling every letter out of a font and dropping it onto a type tray. The term has been bastardised over the years to being accepted as a term interchangeable with typeface. I just checked Wikipedia, even they don't have the definition quite right. - Boyd

 

[binki]

We use Wings Experience marketed by Mesa Dist when we purchased our SWF machine. It is pretty good but not on a scale with Wilcom. Most of what comes in here will do with that and the really tough stuff goes to our digitizer who does use Wilcom.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

We use Wings Experience marketed by Mesa Dist when we purchased our SWF machine. It is pretty good but not on a scale with Wilcom. Most of what comes in here will do with that and the really tough stuff goes to our digitizer who does use Wilcom.

Wings is decent. I have a copy of it around, but your right Wilcom is the best. Over the years i have been through all the levels, finally with Level 3 the last 2 versions. Wilcom is the one that I would recommend. Even the very basic entry level DecoStudio has work arounds that you can use to do the more complicated effects that are streamlined in Levels 2 and 3. Plus you can't beat their stitch processor.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Linked is something along the lines of streamlined effects that I was talking about. This was a design that I did for the shop, so people could see some of the effects that embroidery could do.

You have blending on the sun and the sun rays. Now it didn't show up to well in this picture, but you also have blending of the grass areas as well. Both of those used the more common profiles, if you wanted to change profiles for blending it is easy enough to do, you just have to break the complete object into several sections, each section with a different density setting. Stitching angle is important here.

The is also an effect that Wilcom calls "Carving", but Wings I believe calls it "Stamping". It shows up better in person then it does in the pictures, but on the horse I used the carving effect and put "WWD" on the horse like it was a brand.

Everything in this pattern can be done with a program that has a manual input, which even the most basic commercial software I believe has. You just have to plan out well in advance, stitch type, underlay, density, start and end points, stitch angle, stitch order etc. Also bare in mind that manual stitch points are like using pixels in Ps, they are fixed. You might be able to scale the design 5% up or down, but that's about it. Using the other digitizing methods and you have more scaling options within the realm of what the thread will do based on the embroidery vector information of the pattern.