Welcome everyone to the BFC DESIGN SPLITTING PROJECT!!!! Over the next few days you will be receiving several emails like this one from the me being sent as a Special Notice so those of you that are on digest or special Notice only will be able to receive them. Each email will explain a few steps to be done in splitting the turquoise flower design you downloaded from our special Group web page. I will also be including some practice things for you to do to get familiar with your software along the way. Try to do the step in your software. If you have problems or can't figure out how to do one of these tasks in your software, post your message to the group using this format in the subject line: Q-(your software) - (type of question, for example, deleting, adding, etc.) Please don't post a question that has already been asked, as we will try to address all questions. If you answer a question, repeat the subject line and put RE: in front of it. As I have said in each of my messages about this project, my goal is not to give you the steps in your own software for splitting a design. I am going to be explaining the concepts behind splitting, give you the things that need to be done and then the group members that use your software will help interpret how to do these steps in each software program if we can. I think a lot of times, as with many things done on the computer, we get caught up in the technical parts of our software and forget what we are really trying to accomplish. The entire purpose of splitting a design is to be able to stitch the parts so they go together! When you think of how tiny each stitch can be on our embroidery machines, this can sound like a pretty awesome task! Whenever I plan to split a design, I spend a lot of time looking at the design and trying to find a place that if I don't line it up quite perfectly it will still look OK. I look for the parts of the design that stitch last as these often cover other stitches and allow a little leeway. I never put an outline in one part and the *thing* it's outlining in another part! That's asking for disaster. I have often split very large designs 4 or more ways in order to get good easy splits to stitch back together. I can tell you that it has always worked better than when I try to do a two way split that is hard to line up again. More on this in the next email. Now to our turquoise flower. This is a pretty easy one as I wanted even the newbies to be able to work together on this. I want you to do the following: (We are going to assume we are splitting this design for a 4x4 hoop and we are going in *baby* steps. ) 1. Open the design in your software. Immediately save it as *SplitTurquoiseFlower*. I never work on my original design. 2. Check the measurements of the entire design: This one is 3.83 x 6.8" Make sure you can find out how to see how big a design is in your software. See if your software has some way to measure parts of the design. This might be a ruler running down the side, or a tool that you can use to click one spot and click the next and see how long that part is. The first thing I want to make sure of before I start splitting a design is that at least one of these measurements will fit in my hoop. If I am splitting for a 4x4 hoop, I want to make sure my finished *parts* will be no bigger than 3.89 x 3.89 to allow for the sewing field being not quite a full 4". I have found this rule of thumb to be very safe. 3. Let's assume instead of being 3.83" wide, this design was 4.01" wide and 8" tall. I certainly don't want to do a 4 way split for such a small gain in size!!!!!! I would then resize my design so it is no bigger than 3.89" x 7.78" For practice, I want you to reduce the size of your SplitTurquoiseflower design to 90% of it's original size. Once you have done this save it as *SmallSplitTurquoiseFlower* We might not be using this file later, but I want you to be comfortable re-sizing your designs! NOTES ON RE-SIZING DESIGNS: Designs resize best in the software they were created in! If you are using different software than the digitizer used, then 20% bigger or smaller is a good rule of thumb. The reason for this so you will understand what happens when you resize a design is that some programs create stitiches that other programs have a hard time interpreting. So, when it goes to recalculate the stitches for your resized design, it doesn't do a very good job of it. It has to *guess* This is why when someone buys my designs and tells me *PES is fine - I can convert* I always ask them what they will convert to and send them the format converted from my own software. The same with re-sizing, if someone tells me *I will resize it* I offer to resize it for them. In my own program, I've increased designs by almost 300% and reduced them 30-40% with good results. If I tried to do that in another program I would have a disaster! So be careful when you resize designs and when at all possible ask the digitizer to do it for you. So, in summary in this message, you have three things to do: Save your design with another name, See how big it is and reduce it to 90% of it's original size. If any of you have trouble doing any of these three things, please post your question on the group. I will answer any questions referring to Artista software. If you want, go through the database and find the people that have listed your software and say they are proficient at it. Feel free to address a message to them (still with the same format above in the subject line - you can put their name at the end) but please do this on the group so we can all benefit. I will be posting the next steps later today. Have fun!!! Suz Susan Makalinaw Business/Computer Consultant BFC Consulting, BFC Creations 303 Greenwich Ave Suite A122 Warwick, RI 02886 Phone: 401 737 8037 Pager: 401 563 0851 suz@bfc-creations.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BFC-Creations/ www.BFC-Creations.com NOTES ON RE-SIZING DESIGNS: Designs resize best in the software they were created in! If you are using different software than the digitizer used, then 20% bigger or smaller is a good rule of thumb. The reason for this soyou will understand what happens when you resize a design is that some programs create stitiches that other programs have a hard time interpreting. So, when it goes to recalculate the stitches for your resized design, it doesn't do a very good job of it. It has to *guess* This is why when someone buys my designs and tells me *PES is fine - I can convert* I always ask them what they will convert to and send them the format converted from my own software. The same with re-sizing, if someone tells me *I will resize it* I offer to resize it for them. In my own program, I've increased designs by almost 300% and reduced them 30-40% with good results. If I tried to do that in another program I would have a disaster! So be careful when you resize designs and when at all possible ask the digitizer to do it for you. So, in summary in this message, you have three things to do: Save your design with another name, See how big it is and reduce it to 90% of it's original size. If any of you have trouble doing any of these three things, please post your question on the group. I will be posting the next steps later today. Have fun!!! Suz