Digitizing

Embroidery Digitizing is the art of taking a logo or any graphical image and converting it into embroidery points. Generally when a digitizer digitizes an embroidery design, they are using a computer software program and using its tools to plot these points. Those points are then converted into stitches by the software and then saved to an embroidery software format which the embroidery machine can read. The final embroidery file tells the machine in which direction to move the frame for each stitch.

History

An early type of Digitizing Tablet

Before embroidery machines where run by computers, all embroidery was done by hand by moving the garment manually as the needle moved up and down creating the stitch. Around the late 1970s Embroidery Machines were then equipped with X and Y motors which moved the garments left and right and back and forward. The X and Y movements were controlled by software programs also known as digitized designs or digitized logos.

In the late 1970s till around the late 1990s, all digitizing was done on a large tablet with a puck. The large tablet was generally about the size of a small dinner table. The tablets were typically white and on a stand so that they would be stood up at a slight angle where the digitizer could sit in front of it. The tablets look similar to a white board. The tablets were attached to a computer. An embroidery artist (sometimes the digitizer) would then hand draw the logo by about 10 times the size of the final embroidery product, usually on heavier stock paper or something that might look like project board or poster board. Using colored pencils the artist might also color in parts of the drawing so the digitizer knew what colors each part of the logo was supposed to be. The artist might also pencil in various notes on the paper for the digitizer. Due to the width of an embroidery stitch or embroidery thread and the garment fibers, very fine detail is sometimes hard to achieve with embroidery. A good embroidery artist would remove or enlarge parts of the image that were too small for embroidery stitches. They might also add reference lines or marks for the digitizer. The large paper was then handed to the digitizer who would meticulously tape the paper to the digitizing tablet using masking tape or a tape easy to remove. It was very important that the design was not only taped perfectly level to the table but that the corners and center points were marked as well. At this time computer software was not available to move, rotate or recenter the image so if the paper was not taped just perfectly, the final embroidery product would not be perfectly squared either. The reference marks were made so that if the digitizer had to take the paper off their tablet, they would know exactly where to put it back on if they needed to stop in the middle of a design. The papers were usually rolled up or folded and saved.

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Example of punched paper tape

Once the digitizer had their design taped to the table, they would use the puck to start plotting each stitch one by one. The puck looked very similar to a computer mouse with cross hairs and many more buttons. A digitizer might place the puck at one point of the design, then click a button, then move the puck again and click the button again. Each time the digitizer clicked the button on the puck, a stitch was made. During the early years of digitizing, the tablet was directly connect to a paper tape punch machine. The paper tape looked like a roll of masking tape or something similar but was only paper. Each time a stitch was made with the puck the paper tape was immediately punch a hole. These punched holes would tell the machine which way to move the X and Y axises before placing the point. If the digitizer made a mistake with their stitches, they would have to physically find the holes on the paper tape that corresponded to those stitches and tape them up and then re-punch new holes with a paper tape hole punch device. The paper tapes were also the only copy of the design available. Computers did not have storage space and floppy disk were not yet affordable. If the paper tape was lost or damaged, then the design would be lost and the digitizer would have to re-digitize it. These paper tapes were usually labeled and stored away for future use. Years later around the early 1980s once PCs started becoming more advanced, the data points were saved on the PC and once the entire design was completed the paper tape could be made. Sometimes the term punching or punch a tape might be used to refer to the act of digitizing. This term now is generally only used by the people who have been in the embroidery business a long time.

Automatic and Manual Digitizing

Some embroidery software packages have Automatic Digitizing features. Automatic Digitizing is the act of taking a computer graphic image and converting it to stitches automatically. Traditionally the stitches are created manually on the computer software plotting each point in the same direction or same steps that the digitizer would want the machine to run. Automatic digitizing software will automatically plot all the points by vectoring the image. What this means is that the automatic digitizing software will look at the graphic and attempt to find common shapes such as boxes, rectangles, and curves. For example, the letter T generally is made of 2 rectangles. One rectangle goes up and down and another one goes to the left and right. Automatic digitizing software will attempt to find these shapes and then process them into stitches. A digitizer who is manually digitizing an image will do the same thing. As humans we can easily recognize these basic shapes. If a digitizer is manually digitizing an image, they will tell the software where all these points are at by manually plotting all the points. Once these basic shapes are plotted or 'digitized', the software can fill them in with stitches.