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Browse designs

The built-in 'embroidery library' makes it easy to search, sort and browse all embroidery designs on your system. If you are already familiar with Windows Explorer, the interface will be quite intuitive to you. But there are some differences. The embroidery library is a 'virtual library' in that any designs on your system can be located and displayed within the navigation tree. The design software doesn't care where they physically reside on your hard disk or external storage devices. Any folder containing embroidery designs can be included in the navigation tree.

The screen illustrations in this publication are intended as representations, not exact duplicates of screen layouts generated by the software. The samples used to illustrate software features and capabilities may not be exactly duplicable, depending on your product level.

Open the embroidery library

The embroidery library opens in its own tab on the design bar. It has five components - two toolbars, a toolbox, a navigation tree, a design display area, and an info panel.

ComponentFunction
Toolbox

Use the toolbox on the left to open selected designs, convert them, print them, or output them to any connected embroidery machine or data media, or find folders containing the designs and add/remove folders to/from embroidery library.

Navigation tree

Navigating to design folders with Embroidery Library is similar to browsing with Windows Explorer. View any supported file type residing in design folders. Designs can be searched, sorted, grouped, and browsed by name and other information. Right-click the navigation tree to access a popup menu. Use it to copy and delete without leaving the software.

Embroidery Library is ‘virtual’ in the sense that any designs on your system can be located and displayed within the library. You can add folders both in Windows Explorer and in the Embroidery Library itself. The initial folder structure is created by your installation. However, any folders on your local network which contain embroidery designs or artwork can potentially be included and viewed in Embroidery Library.

Design display

The design display area shows any designs in selected folders corresponding to the filter selected and search criteria entered in the View toolbar. Search or sort the entire embroidery library or any chosen folders on any criteria selected. Use this toolbar also to customize the design display view. See below.

Design info

When a design is selected, summary information is displayed in the info panel which may at the bottom or to the side, depending on your version of Windows. Some of the fields, such as 'Comments', can be edited in the info panel and saved to the design for future reference. See also Design information.

Standard toolbar

Create new designs, open existing designs, open recent designs, and cut, copy and paste selected designs.


Change design display

Use the View (Manage Designs) toolbar to control display of the navigation pane as well as thumbnail appearance. Use the Change View droplist to display designs in the preferred format.

 

Default detail columns vary by file type and are controlled by MS Windows®. Embroidery Library, however, provides additional columns for data derived from embroidery files. These can be accessed by right-clicking the top of the column and selecting a field from the droplist. They may include design status, customer, size, author, etc. Such details are primarily intended for use with EMB but can also apply to other embroidery formats. Some formats may show more details than others. Columns themselves can be arranged in any order by clicking and dragging into the preferred position.

Like Windows Explorer, the Embroidery Library display can be refreshed with a simple <F5> keypress.

Filter, sort, and search for designs

The View toolbar provides a powerful means for sorting, filtering, and searching for designs in your embroidery library. For instance, filter the library to show only certain file types. Use it also to search for names or keywords or sort them by name, create date, or other criteria. Use it also to control display of the navigation tree as well as thumbnail appearance. First select the root folder in the Design Library navigation tree that you want to search on. Every highlighted folder will be included in the search:

Use the 'Showing' droplist to narrow the search according to file type – e.g. all-in-one design files, machine files, or all embroidery files (the default).

The 'Search' field is very powerful. Use it to narrow the search by choosing a criteria from the droplist.

If you select 'Date modified', you can further narrow the search according to the criteria available in the droplist – e.g. 'Last week'.

If you want to search on 'General' criteria, you can search on any criteria displayed on the Info panel. For example...

This translates to:

  • Author name is 'Wilcom'
  • Number of colors is less than 5
  • Number of stitches is less than 3000

This will narrow the search to only those designs which have been authored by 'Wilcom', which have less than 5 colors, and which have less than 3000 stitches. Make sure you use the correct syntax. Each field name must include a colon ':' after the name. Use the Clear Search Filter (X) button to clear the Search field before conducting another search.

You can search on the following machine file data...

  • Name
  • Stitches
  • Height
  • Width
  • Colors