Understanding Embroidery formats

Embroidery formats for embroidery machines and digitzing software is a topic that would be easy to understand if the industry would standardize formats but that is not and seems will not be the case, at least in the foreseable future. Becaue of this it is important to undertstand these formats and why they are important. Embroidery design formats fall in to two broad categories, machine format and outline format.

Where it gets tricky is each of those parent categories have numerous child formats. I will avoid getting into an overly technical discussion on this topic but it is extremly important to have a basic understand about the primary difference between the two file types. Machine Formats, often referred to as Stitch Files are a combination of a set of machine commands that tell the embroidery machine pantograph where to go in an X,Y axis and also provide for machine function calls like trimming and color changes. Machine formats are the output from digitzing software and are for the most part not scalable. Outline formats on the other hand are a set of mathematic coordinates that define the oultine of an object. There is no X,Y infomration and machine commands are not added until the outline file is saved as a machine format. While this might seem highly technical it is extremely important to understand if you are going to particapte at a professional level in the world of commercial embroidery.

While there are dozens of machine formats for all intents and purposes the DST file is as close to a universal format as you will find in the industry. All major commercial embroidery machines will read DST files but where it gets complicated and confusing is many machine manufacturers also have their own machine formats. Because of this you will hear an entire alphabet of file extensions discussed. To name only a few: Melco.EXP, Barudan.FMC, Barudan.FDR, Brother.PES, Husquavarna.HUS, Janome.JEF, Singer.XXX, and many others. You must know which format your machine requires in order to run a design and you should know tht most machines accept more than one format.

Further complicating the issue is a discussion on outline files. Every software publisher has their own outline format and it is completely proprietary to that software publisher. I could list many others but the five major players are Wilcom.EMB, Pulse.PXF, Melco.OFM, Wings.NGS and Compuconn.REF. There are others but these are the five I get requests for 98% of the time and all of others make up the remaining two percent. Outline files are more important to the digitizer than the customer because unless you have matching software you will not be able open let alone edit an outline file. Additionally, if you are going to edit a file you want to only edit the outline file. Yes [yes] you can edit a machine file, higher end modern digitizing software has made it much easier but the outline file is where you want to edit whenever possible.

Many of our customers are submitting our files (outline or machine) to embroidery houses to get their embroidery work done. You should ask your embroidery professional if they have a preferred outline format. The odds are very good your embroidery company has an in-house editing station and if you can provide to them the proper outline file you will make the job of editing a design significantly easier. Additionally, outline files are far more friendly to scaling than machine files. Machines files can scale at the most 20%. Outline files (depending on the art) can sometimes scale as much as 100%. But you should be warned, there is far more involved in scaling a design than just file type.

In conclusion and in the interest of keeping it simple: Machine formats, aka stitch files are for your machine and Outline Formats are for your computer. Stitch files are very limited when it comes to editing and outlines files are only limited by the skill of the digitizer. Whenever possible you should know the preferred outline format for your embroidery house. Qdigitizing programs in all major machine and outline formats. All you need to do is tell us what you need and we can take care of your embroidery formatting needs.