Hi! A conversation took place in the StitchArtist Digitizing Fans FB group, and the community got the answers, but they’re buried in comments. Sometimes it’s nice to simply have the answers all put together.
1.) If you have Essentials, right click on a color chip in the properties and select Keep Stop when you want a multi-needle machine to stop and not switch needles. Note that commercial formats EXP and DST are ancient and have no color information, so just change the color. You assign the needles to the stops on commercial machines using those formats.
2.) Publishing native fonts requires that every column have inclination(s). You cannot publish a font with auto-columns because that takes longer to generate and will change based on other settings, so no auto-digitized-columns on native fonts, please. The error dialog window tells you the affected letters, so you can easily go back and add those.
3.) To type using collections of lettering designs (stitch files), use AlphaTricks.
4.) If you merge a stitch file (like .PES) into a design page, you haven’t simply ‘opened’ it. You have merged it to a design page. If you just save, you normally do not want to overwrite the original design file – you made changes, and it now has a working file. Thus, you name it, as you haven’t got a name yet. If you really do want to overwrite the original design, you can: In the Save window, navigate to the original file, select it, and that will put its name in there for you so you don’t have to type.
There is always confusion between working files and stitch files. Working files retain all your information: objects, properties, etc. Stitch files only have stitches, and the formats vary greatly as to what information they contain.
Files are really not large, so add a (2), (3), etc. Save your changes so you can always go back if you need to. Once you’re done with a project, zip them together and put on a backup somewhere in case someone else would like to use them someday.
I’ll add one to the discussion: If you do ITH projects a lot, more than, say, layering designs, then you might want to use the Preferences and turn the Remove hidden stitches off. It is set to on, which means when you save, the program will automatically try to lighten the result by removing areas where you have combined designs and overlapped them. With this default off, you can simply click the scissors button to remove overlaps before you save, as needed. StitchArtist users must remember though, that RHS is not for you! You are creating the stitches. If you don’t want them, don’t create them, even if that means, (Oh, heaven forbid!) adjusting the outlines of underlying shapes. 🙂
Cheers,
-Brian