Navigation

The Navigation H.U.D. (Heads Up Display) is an ingenious device that keeps navigation tools readily available, yet tucked away, for easy access to the entire working area on your Design Page. To access the Navigation H.U.D. (aka: Nav H.U.D.), click the Compass Rose icon at the top of the zoom slider in the upper right hand area of the main view.

The Nav H.U.D. is especially useful when working on large designs and/or a small monitor. It quickly gives you a bird’s eye view of your work area as well as a nice “you are here” indicator. In the following image, the area around his eyes will be centered on the screen.

As you move the cursor, the ‘+’ indicates the area of focus. The panel lets you pan around the design page. The benefit is that you can make edits to different design sections while you are still zoomed in to a comfortable level.

 

The Nav H.U.D works in conjunction with the Pan Tool, which is accessible by holding down the spacebar.

Hold the spacebar and drag with this cursor to pan.

 

Whereas the Pan Tool is useful for moving around the area you are currently working in, the Nav H.U.D. makes it easy to scroll across the entire page to a specific place in one easy step.

The chosen hoop is shown in the Nav H.U.D. whether that hoop is visible or not. This is because the size of your workspace is related to the size of that hoop. The selected hoop is a visual reference only and does not prevent you from designing or saving projects larger than the selected hoop or, for that matter, larger than your machine can sew.

Therefore if you have a small hoop selected and a design that well exceeds the hoop boundaries, it is possible that you won’t be able to navigate to the outer reaches of your design. The solution is to select a larger hoop from the Environment > Hoops option in the Program Preferences panel.

Same design with the hoop set to 60mm x 40mm with the cursor shown
at the upper left limit. Parts of this design are inaccessible.

 

Normally, once you’ve panned or zoomed in the Nav H.U.D. the panel will automatically close when you release the mouse. If you’d like to leave the Nav H.U.D. open while you move to several locations, click the ‘Pin’ button just to the left of the close box. Once pinned, the panel will stay open until you click out of it, or click the ‘Close’ button on the top, right in the H.U.D.

 

                                  

Unpinned (default setting)             Pinned

 

Notice on the top of the Nav H.U.D. are three small buttons labeled ‘A,’ ‘S,’ and ‘H.’ These buttons correspond to preset zoom settings of ‘All,’ ‘Selected,’ and ‘Hoop,’ whose keyboard shortcuts are respectively ‘A,’ ‘S,’ and ‘0.’

Just below the compass rose icon is a zoom slider. Slide up to zoom in; down to zoom out. Click on the ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons to zoom in and out also. If you’ve ever used an online map, this zoom slider control should feel familiar. The slider control also responds to numeric key entry. For example, pressing 5 will move the slider control to 500%.