The idea behind Essentials is to include the features, which are essential for every embroiderer, yet not to overwhelm the user with unnecessary extras. It is designed to be simple and easy, yet powerful enough to accommodate the person who wants to do more than simply using existing designs. The feature packs are additional programs that you may purchase to add on to your Embrilliance Essentials to make it YOUR software. No need to learn a new program! You simply add new features and functions as you want them to your existing software.
• 12 Fonts for multi-line text, monogramming and circle text.
• Sample designs, which are scalable and recalculate their stitches as you interactively transform them.
• Unlimited lines of letters or monograms and embroidery designs can be combined.
• You can mix and match fonts and sizes.
• Merge existing embroidery files into your design.
• Overlap designs – even appliques – and have hidden stitching removed.
• Browse and Merge designs in folders and from inside .ZIP files.
• Resize existing embroidery files with stitch recalculation. You can resize embroidery designs up to 250% and down to 50%.
• Colorize any embroidery design. You can change the colors one at a time, or convert the entire design or any selected part of it to your preferred thread brand with just a few mouse clicks.
• Simulate the sewing of any design. The simulator can play in 3D, play forward and backward, and has variable speed. The simulator also has a slider so that you can manually scroll forward and backward through the design to any point without waiting. You can even insert a color stop in the sewing process.
• Convert any design from one format to any of the supported types, which include:
• Read: ART, CND, CSD, DST, DSZ, EMD, EXP, EXP+, GNC, HUS, JAN, JEF, JEF+, PCM, PCS, PEC, PES, PHC, SEW, SHV, TAP, VIP, VP3, XXX, EMB.
• Write: CSD, DST, DSZ, EXP, EXP+, HUS, JEF, PCS, PES (v1-9), PCM, SEW, SHV, TAP, VIP, VP3, XXX.
• Designer 1 Disk Utility for floppy and USB machines.
• Split designs for several multi-position hoops, including the Brother/Baby Lock 100x100 machines, and the 14” x 14” Jumbo Hoop.
• Project Advisor, a patented expert system with guidance to help successful embroidery on all your projects.
• Install .BX files, the industry standard for distributing fonts in a ready-to-type format.
• Create working files (.BE extension) to save your design as an editable and merge-able file. Your working file is saved for you automatically when you save a stitch file so you don’t have to ‘Save’ twice every time you make some changes—once for the stitch file and once for the working file.
• Embrilliance has an advanced program interface that’s super easy to use yet offers features normally reserved for very expensive programs.
• Real Scale zooming allows you to view your designs on screen at the actual size that they will stitch out.
• Navigation Window that provides instant control over the zoom and scroll in the program’s view.
• Sewing Order control allows you to re-sequence the designs to sew in the order you want them to sew.
• Color Sorting control to intelligently reduce the number of extra color changes.
• Adjustable Mouse Wheel attribute for Zoom or Scroll.
• Simple centering in the hoop plus advanced alignment.
• Thread Palette creation and thread inventory system.
• Basting designs.
• Automatically check for updates.
Essentials has a technology known as a stitch processor that lets you resize existing stitch files upward to 250% and downward to 50%.
This recalculation of the stitches allows even lettering designs that have been added with a BX font or AlphaTricks to be scaled and stitches recalculated.
When sizing using handles in the Main View, stitches are recalculated – if you hold down the Ctrl key while dragging, recalculation is disabled for that drag (which can be useful to very simply lighten the density in a design a bit).
The process of recalculation is to add more ‘lines’ of stitching in the satin and fill areas of a design. They may even be curved fill lines, or lines with carved areas such as pattern fills. The sizing engine will preserve the look of the fill while keeping the density the same as it was when the design was at its original size.
You can size, resize and resize again in Essentials, as the original design is kept behind the scenes and is always re-referenced when creating a new size.
When sizing with the handles in the Main View, the upper and lower limits of percentage are limited to help prevent overly-distorted designs. You may override this using the size boxes on the Tool Pane which let you specify a size.