In his book, Digitizing Made Easy, author John Deer writes about getting used to a particular scale or scales while you are creating a design. This allows you to learn what a useful distance in the real world will look like on-screen. The Embrilliance platform has a Preference which lets you calibrate the display to a Real Scale (See the program help on User Interface for details). Once you have done that for your computer/monitor setup, it does not need to be done again.
To get to a particular ‘zoom’ level, use the number keys. ‘1’ is a 1:1 ratio of the size of things on-screen to the real world. 3:1 and 6:1 are popular as well. If you use the number key ‘0’ you will be zoomed to your hoop.
Using a consistent set of scales is useful. Once you become well used to seeing design work at those scales, you’ll be able to know what the stitches will look like without having to sew them out. If you are zoomed too far in, you will likely be creating more detail than the design will need which slows the design creation process and can even negatively impact the sew-ability of the design.
If you are editing a design, feel free to use the zoom slider or other keys such as ‘A’ (All), ‘S’ (Selected) to work at a comfortable level. Generally speaking, unless an object outline is very large, you should be able to see the whole object on your screen while editing. Zooming in extra close can be useful to make the nodes perfectly line-up, but that is not necessary for a great design.
Note: If you have any objects selected, using the “s” key is a quick way to center the Main View on them for editing.