[in terms of design i found this article interesting, in that
the first computer/program has been consider the Jacquard
Loom (sp?), where a card with instructions would program
the loom to weave a certain pattern. so, seeing an article
about computer programs for embroidery brought up this
aspect of computing and art/design, and also brings up the
question, Bauhaus-related, as to how/why these programs
can be used interdisciplinarily, in the sense that the computer
may be a weaving, architecture, art tool. for the interested...]
Forward Migration Kit: Embroidery/stitching s/w, part 2
by Dennis Sellers, dsellers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
February 15, 2002 8:00 am ET
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0202/15.forwardkit.php
(For those new to the column, Forward Migration is our term for
companies moving from Wintel machines to Macs -- or at least adding
or increasing the number of Macs they use. A Forward Migration Kit is
an overview of Mac OS products for a particular occupation, such as
photography, optometry, etc.)
This week we're serving up the second and final part of our roundup
of embroidery/stitching software for the Mac.
JacqCAD
JacqCAD is an application that's available at a "reasonable cost" to
universities with an active program in jacquard weaving, according to
Patricia Williams, professor, Textiles Area, Eastern Michigan
University
"We've been using it at my university for several years," she told
MacCentral. "It is very useful not only for jacquard design, but also
for its very sophisticated repeats functions, which can be used to
develop designs for stitching, fabric printing and knitting, as well
as weaving."
QuiltPro
QuiltPro is a $99.95 application that promises to let you create a
quilt and see it come to life without ever cutting a scrap of
material. You can purportedly experiment with designs, play with
fabrics, move blocks, and overlay stitching.
Quilt-Pro lets you design your own blocks or work with the block
library. You can scan in your own fabrics, and create custom quilt
layouts and pieced borders. Quilt-Pro requires Mac OS 7.1 or higher,
but isn't Carbonized for Mac OS X. A demo is available.
PowerStitch
Textile Technologies offers a program called PowerStitch, which is
described as "Pay As You Go" embroidery design software. You pay for
designs as you create them.
According to the folks at Textile Technologies, here's how it works:
you install the PowerStitch software from the CD. You can then punch
your design using all the sophisticated tools available in
PowerStitch and save it. In order to output the design, you call
their office to pay for the design and receive an access code that
enables you to export the design to your embroidery machine. The cost
per design is based on the number of stitches in your design.
Designs under 1,000 stitches are free. It's then $4 per 1,000
stitches using the PowerStitch Limited Edition software and $7 per
1,000 stitches using the full featured PowerStitch version.
PowerStitch features complex fill, fancy fill, the ability to import
illustration files, the ability to create alphabets; a 3D preview,
and more.
Once you've paid for a design you can modify and scale the design. If
the design is changed more than 10 percent it is considered a new
design and you will be charged "appropriately." If you re-use a
segment of a design you have already paid for, you won't be charged
for the stitch count of the reused segment.
3dVirtual Embroidery
Shareware developer Humberto Lizarraga has a shareware 3D visualizing
application for embroidery files called 3dVirtual Embroidery. It's a
lifelike embroidery viewer. A demo (a 349k file) can be downloaded.
Wabbitt Wanch
Wabbit Wanch Design makes two Macintosh products for embroidery. Both
products are for PFAFF 7570/7560 owners. PFAFF is the only company
that did support the Macintosh, but with the introduction of a new
embroidery/sewing machine have moved on to the Windows systems only.
StitchBunnyPro is designed to enhance the embroidery experience by
allowing the user to view designs with more than the PFAFF default 16
colors, view in single or catalog style, use 3D viewing to see the
thread sheen of the final design without stitching it out and watch
your design sew in slow motion so you can pick up errors before
sewing it out.
Additionally, you can see what your designs look like on custom
fabrics, use the Smart-Split to create multiple files on high thread
count designs, change the stitching order, combine different
stitching regions, flip, and rotate a design.
For building multiple frame designs, where the only limit is your
monitor and imagination, you can use the Scene Builder in
StitchBunnyPro. You start with a grid of cells and into each cell you
can place multiple designs. For the designs in the cells you can use
the alignment or spacing tools, duplicate, rotate, mirror and print
templates for real world alignment. When the scene of designs looks
the way you want it, you use the Assemble tool to create multiple
frame designs that retain the position and colors of the designs in
each cell.
WabbitWanch's FlutterWhumperPro is an auto-trace assistant for
PFAFF's PC Designer software. With this simple to use software, you
can trace any font letter(s) installed on the Mac or any monochrome
graphic, Mel Patrick, Wabbit Wanch CEO, told MacCentral. Once an
outline is created by tracing, you can apply many of the special
attribute features like Bean, Satin, Variable Satin or 9mm patterns
to create satin or pattern edges, special effects and fills.
"FlutterWhumperPro sports special features that make digitizing
easier like smoothing of pixelated graphics, simple graphic editing
tools, exporting your graphic for proper sizing in PC Designer and
using the clipboard to copy segments from FlutterWhumperPro to PC
Designer," he said.
Both StitchBunnyPro and FlutterWhumperPro work on Macintosh systems
from System 7.5 through to OS 9.2. There are no Mac OS X versions due
to the fact that PC Designer doesn't support OS X. It requires a
direct serial connection that isn't available via Mac OS X, Patrick
said.
Speaking of Pfaff, their PC Designer software lets you create your
own stitch designs on your computer screen in full color, then
download them to your sewing machine and sew them out.
The app's tools let you create just about any stitch design you can
imagine. You can base it entirely on your own idea or take the
built-in stitch designs from Pfaff and alter them any way you like
for a totally new effect.
.... <snip>
2oo2. copyright to author. [fair-use, basic & applied
art&architectural design .edu]
the first computer/program has been consider the Jacquard
Loom (sp?), where a card with instructions would program
the loom to weave a certain pattern. so, seeing an article
about computer programs for embroidery brought up this
aspect of computing and art/design, and also brings up the
question, Bauhaus-related, as to how/why these programs
can be used interdisciplinarily, in the sense that the computer
may be a weaving, architecture, art tool. for the interested...]
Forward Migration Kit: Embroidery/stitching s/w, part 2
by Dennis Sellers, dsellers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
February 15, 2002 8:00 am ET
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0202/15.forwardkit.php
(For those new to the column, Forward Migration is our term for
companies moving from Wintel machines to Macs -- or at least adding
or increasing the number of Macs they use. A Forward Migration Kit is
an overview of Mac OS products for a particular occupation, such as
photography, optometry, etc.)
This week we're serving up the second and final part of our roundup
of embroidery/stitching software for the Mac.
JacqCAD
JacqCAD is an application that's available at a "reasonable cost" to
universities with an active program in jacquard weaving, according to
Patricia Williams, professor, Textiles Area, Eastern Michigan
University
"We've been using it at my university for several years," she told
MacCentral. "It is very useful not only for jacquard design, but also
for its very sophisticated repeats functions, which can be used to
develop designs for stitching, fabric printing and knitting, as well
as weaving."
QuiltPro
QuiltPro is a $99.95 application that promises to let you create a
quilt and see it come to life without ever cutting a scrap of
material. You can purportedly experiment with designs, play with
fabrics, move blocks, and overlay stitching.
Quilt-Pro lets you design your own blocks or work with the block
library. You can scan in your own fabrics, and create custom quilt
layouts and pieced borders. Quilt-Pro requires Mac OS 7.1 or higher,
but isn't Carbonized for Mac OS X. A demo is available.
PowerStitch
Textile Technologies offers a program called PowerStitch, which is
described as "Pay As You Go" embroidery design software. You pay for
designs as you create them.
According to the folks at Textile Technologies, here's how it works:
you install the PowerStitch software from the CD. You can then punch
your design using all the sophisticated tools available in
PowerStitch and save it. In order to output the design, you call
their office to pay for the design and receive an access code that
enables you to export the design to your embroidery machine. The cost
per design is based on the number of stitches in your design.
Designs under 1,000 stitches are free. It's then $4 per 1,000
stitches using the PowerStitch Limited Edition software and $7 per
1,000 stitches using the full featured PowerStitch version.
PowerStitch features complex fill, fancy fill, the ability to import
illustration files, the ability to create alphabets; a 3D preview,
and more.
Once you've paid for a design you can modify and scale the design. If
the design is changed more than 10 percent it is considered a new
design and you will be charged "appropriately." If you re-use a
segment of a design you have already paid for, you won't be charged
for the stitch count of the reused segment.
3dVirtual Embroidery
Shareware developer Humberto Lizarraga has a shareware 3D visualizing
application for embroidery files called 3dVirtual Embroidery. It's a
lifelike embroidery viewer. A demo (a 349k file) can be downloaded.
Wabbitt Wanch
Wabbit Wanch Design makes two Macintosh products for embroidery. Both
products are for PFAFF 7570/7560 owners. PFAFF is the only company
that did support the Macintosh, but with the introduction of a new
embroidery/sewing machine have moved on to the Windows systems only.
StitchBunnyPro is designed to enhance the embroidery experience by
allowing the user to view designs with more than the PFAFF default 16
colors, view in single or catalog style, use 3D viewing to see the
thread sheen of the final design without stitching it out and watch
your design sew in slow motion so you can pick up errors before
sewing it out.
Additionally, you can see what your designs look like on custom
fabrics, use the Smart-Split to create multiple files on high thread
count designs, change the stitching order, combine different
stitching regions, flip, and rotate a design.
For building multiple frame designs, where the only limit is your
monitor and imagination, you can use the Scene Builder in
StitchBunnyPro. You start with a grid of cells and into each cell you
can place multiple designs. For the designs in the cells you can use
the alignment or spacing tools, duplicate, rotate, mirror and print
templates for real world alignment. When the scene of designs looks
the way you want it, you use the Assemble tool to create multiple
frame designs that retain the position and colors of the designs in
each cell.
WabbitWanch's FlutterWhumperPro is an auto-trace assistant for
PFAFF's PC Designer software. With this simple to use software, you
can trace any font letter(s) installed on the Mac or any monochrome
graphic, Mel Patrick, Wabbit Wanch CEO, told MacCentral. Once an
outline is created by tracing, you can apply many of the special
attribute features like Bean, Satin, Variable Satin or 9mm patterns
to create satin or pattern edges, special effects and fills.
"FlutterWhumperPro sports special features that make digitizing
easier like smoothing of pixelated graphics, simple graphic editing
tools, exporting your graphic for proper sizing in PC Designer and
using the clipboard to copy segments from FlutterWhumperPro to PC
Designer," he said.
Both StitchBunnyPro and FlutterWhumperPro work on Macintosh systems
from System 7.5 through to OS 9.2. There are no Mac OS X versions due
to the fact that PC Designer doesn't support OS X. It requires a
direct serial connection that isn't available via Mac OS X, Patrick
said.
Speaking of Pfaff, their PC Designer software lets you create your
own stitch designs on your computer screen in full color, then
download them to your sewing machine and sew them out.
The app's tools let you create just about any stitch design you can
imagine. You can base it entirely on your own idea or take the
built-in stitch designs from Pfaff and alter them any way you like
for a totally new effect.
.... <snip>
2oo2. copyright to author. [fair-use, basic & applied
art&architectural design .edu]