vector art for Embird

[DogArtGuy]

  Hi, I'm a long time freelance artist in the screenprinting world, expanding into art for embroidery. I'm working with a friend who who is a very experienced custom drapery professional who is starting embroidery (single head machine with a 10 needle babylock coming soon). I do my own freehand artwork and am getting to the point that I have clean vector art (AI).
   Are there any tips for a beginning digitizer to either set up the vector art before I import it into Embird Studio or basic tips for setting things up during the digitizing process? At this point just importing the vectors and doing an auto "generate stitches" seems to produce pretty nice results BUT the actual stitching is overly complicated. I'm not doing the actual stitch work..... just the art. My friend will be tweaking the digitized art (stitch type, density etc.) I just want to give her a (very)good starting point. I'm looking into tutorials and reading etc. but I thought I'd ask to see if I can get a head start and maybe a few "magic formulas".
  Thanks!  ------- Steve

[larryk]

Hi Steve and welcome to the Boards..... We use Embird as well and I create most of the art in Corel and save as a cmx file. Normally we just generate the stitches automatically and let the program do it's thing with results that are acceptable by most all of our customers. Not sure what you mean by the stitching being overly complicated..... but you do have to be careful when drawing to make sure you are not laying colors over the top of each other. The program doesn't recognize just the part showing but also the part that is covered up adding extra stitches and piling up thread where it does not need to be. When things get too complicated we just send them out for digitizing.... Good Luck to ya'

[DogArtGuy]

Thanks for the reply larryk. I'm doing the art in clean vectors, no overlaps. By complicated I mean its jumping around in a seemingly random way and causing issues as it stitches. Just want to make sure I'm not missing something obvious which I know is highly likely since this is new for me. I'm keeping the number of colors down (old screenprinter habit) but there are a lot of small areas that are spread throughout the design. I was hoping there might be an easy way to affect the order of stitching either in the vector file or simple setting during the digitizing to get the best results. Love the possibilities just want to start off on the right foot. Thanks again! 

[Frog]

Hi Steve and welcome to the Boards..... We use Embird as well and I create most of the art in Corel and save as a cmx file. Normally we just generate the stitches automatically and let the program do it's thing with results that are acceptable by most all of our customers. Not sure what you mean by the stitching being overly complicated..... but you do have to be careful when drawing to make sure you are not laying colors over the top of each other. The program doesn't recognize just the part showing but also the part that is covered up adding extra stitches and piling up thread where it does not need to be. When things get too complicated we just send them out for digitizing.... Good Luck to ya'

Could this be remedied by using actions like "Simplify" when creating in CorelDRAW?

[DogArtGuy]

I'm using Illustrator and trying to make the vectors clean, I don't think there are any embroidery specific actions I'm missing. Thanks for the reply Frog, I'll check again.

[Frog]

I'm using Illustrator and trying to make the vectors clean, I don't think there are any embroidery specific actions I'm missing. Thanks for the reply Frog, I'll check again.

The "simplify" action in Corel merely knocks out the color in the bottom object to match the top one, avoiding the "stacking" that apparently is only a concern with embroidery conversion. I don't know if this is what you mean by "clean"

[DogArtGuy]

Oh, ok Frog been a long time since I used Corel.... no I don't have anything "stacked", Thanks tho!

[larryk]

You can always change the order in which the program has stitched it if you don't like the order it is being sewn.