Now in the public domain on the Internet there is a huge number of a wide variety of TTF fonts, both the simplest and very cool in terms of design. In addition, there are much more Russian fonts among such fonts than among library digitized ones, and therefore, it is easier to choose something suitable for each specific case. They can and should be used in machine embroidery digitizing services. To do this, you can go in the following ways:
- Digitize the font manually.
- Convert a font to embroidery using the built-in machine embroidery font converter.
And today I will touch on the simpler of these 2 options - automatic font-to-embroidery conversion. It's pretty straightforward. And since the order of actions in all editors is approximately the same and the most important thing here is to understand the principle
The first thing to do is select the Lettering tool from the online embroidery digitizing tab on the ribbon:
In the lettering additional tab that appears, in the first block of it (Font), I select True Type Font:
Next, I choose which of the font types installed on my computer I will create an inscription. To do this, I have to select a font here:
I also indicate the size in millimeters (the most important thing here is to decide on the correct numbers) and decide whether I want to make the font bold and slanted, if possible for this type of font:
In the next Text block in an empty window, I enter the inscription I need from the keyboard:
With the Char tool, you can immediately see that the list of symbols available for use with the font type I have chosen is very wide, compared to the already digitized library fonts:
Also, I can align text relative to the edge when the "A" button is on:
The small button on the bottom right (with a daw) checks the spelling in several languages, excluding, of course, Russian.
After pressing the Enter key on the keyboard or right-clicking on the working area of the screen and a pretty decent time of thinking, the entered inscription appears on the screen:
And you can already carry out some manipulations with it. They are the same as when working with already digitized fonts: scaling, changing letter spacing, etc. And also absolutely the same possibilities are available for working with each entered character using grips for resizing, shifting horizontally and vertically:
Setting text properties is also exactly the same as for library fonts, as I described in the previous post, using this window:
Some of these parameters are duplicated in the Spacing, Trims, Lock Stitches block so that you can quickly change them:
The next Stitch Type block allows you to control already online embroidery digitizing parameters:
From the drop-down menu, you can select and apply different styles for the letters, such as fill types, border shapes, border shapes, effects, and more.
When you click on the small button next to the name of the Stitch Type block, the following window appears with many tabs with styles and the usual list of customizable embroidery parameters:
The setting of embroidery parameters is traditional: density, available fill type, compensation, short stitches, split stitches, frames, overlaps, bartacks, etc. Everything you need.
The next Arrange block allows you to transform the inscription using all kinds of envelopes:
Naturally, now our font is digitized, albeit automatically, and it is quite accessible for modification and editing of each element and each segment. That is, standard manipulations such as changes in size, position, embroidery parameters are possible with it, each letter can be edited: changing the angle of inclination of stitches, entry-exit points, its shapes can be changed:
In general, everything is simple and easy to operate with this type of lettering. All this is very cool, but do not forget to check the quality of such digitization of fonts. At the same time, for this small person, he will check how the letters line up along the baseline (read about this in the post on the anatomy of fonts). And you also need to see how the editor understood and interpreted each shape, how he put the stitch angles, into which segments, objects and how complex shapes were broken.
Everything is not as rosy as it might seem at first glance. For example, here's the not-so-complicated font type and how the software put the stitches in the letter "e":
And here is a fragment of a complex font and how the editor perceives it, into which sections it breaks it down and how the stitches are laid. This is very revealing:
It turns out that it is easier to do it by hand from scratch than to edit what turned out to be automatic digitizing. It is not for nothing that many online embroidery digitizing write that they do not use any automatic functions and do everything on their own. Indeed, the quality in this case depends only on the skills of the programmer, and not on any third-party factors.
