TruEmbroidery™ 3 Software Newsletter July 2017

Welcome to the TruEmbroidery™ 3 newsletter. This month we will look at the Control Strip and working with Layers in the TruE™ 3 Modify application, available in the TruEmbroidery™ ELITE package.

 

PREMIER+™ 2 Announcement
We are proud to announce the upcoming release of the PREMIER+™ 2 Embroidery System software for Mac®. This will be exciting for you as a TruE™ Embroidery System user as it has been updated with many new features that you've been asking for such as: Cross Stitch Assistant, Word Sculpt and much more!

View a video of some of the new features.

The PREMIER+™ 2 Embroidery System software will be released in October 2017. Look out for the Embroidery Software Newsletters over the next few months, as we give you more information about the features of the PREMIER+™ 2 Embroidery System software and how to secure your copy.

Icons

The Control Strip in TruE™ 3 Modify has several icons that help you view or hide selected areas of complex embroidery designs within the active design in the work area. If several embroideries are loaded as separate layers, only the active embroidery design will be available to filter using the Control Strip.

• To view areas by their color block or thread color changes, use Draw Previous Color Block and Draw Next Color Block . You can scroll forward or backward through all the colors using these two buttons, one color at a time.
• To invert your selection from the visible threads to all hidden threads, use Invert Color Visibility . Click once to invert to all hidden threads, then click again to toggle back to the originally selected thread color(s).
• To make hidden stitches visible in a faded view (but still inaccessible for editing) click on Ghost Mode . Ghost Mode is useful for referencing hidden stitches when moving or reshaping stitch areas.
• To redraw all stitches and make them accessible for editing, click Display All . Display All is useful when you want to view your changes when editing or combining multiple designs.

Designs insert into the work area from File View in the Design Viewer in discrete layers, and only the currently selected Layer can be filtered with the Control Strip.

• Icons in the Design Select View include Move Up (moves the selected design to stitch earlier in the exported embroidery), Move Down (moves the selected design to stitch later in the exported embroidery), and Merge with design above (merges selected design with the design above it in the list).

Tip: Merge does not remove overlapping areas of designs in the TruE™ 3 Modify application, as all stitches in the two merging designs are retained. However, if designs are kept in layers throughout the editing process, you can opt to remove overlapping stitches when you export the embroidery.

Use Life View to review how the designs will appear upon Export, using the current settings in TruE™ 3 Configure .

The design pictured in the illustration is Flower Garden from TruEmbroidery3 > Samples > Studio > Stitch2 > Butterflies and Bugs. TruEmbroidery 3 > Samples can be found in your Home folder in Finder.

Tips and Techniques

Let's create an embroidery design so we can learn more about learn how to isolate areas with the Control Strip and design layering from the Design Select View. See how these tools can enhance and simplify the editing process in the TruE™ 3 Modify.

The Flower Garden embroidery in the illustration has been Resized about 30% larger than the sample file from TruEmbroidery™ 3.

1. Select the Design Viewer from the Panels toolbar, and browse to TruEmbroidery3 > Samples > Studio > Stitch2 > Butterflies and Bugs.
   
   Tip: The File Viewer can be resized to see more or fewer designs by dragging any corner of the viewer box.


2. Click Flower Garden to insert the design, and then click Butterfly and Sunflower.
   The stitch order will follow the insertion order, so Flower Garden will stitch before Butterfly and Sunflower.
   
   Move or close the File Viewer so you can see the work area.


3. Click Control Panel in the Panels toolbar. The Design page is visible by default, and the currently selected design will be highlighted in the Design Select box.
   
   To select a different design for editing, simply click the desired design preview in the Design Select box.
   
   Let's select the first design, Flower Garden, and review how the Control Strip tools let us isolate areas in the design.



4. Box select the design with the Command +A shortcut.


5. Click Resize in the top toolbar, so the select box corner handles are blue, and adjust with a corner handle so the design is more in scale with the Butterfly and Sunflower design.


6. The Control Strip is under the work area in the display.
   
   The functions of the Control Strip are illustrated below, as shown in the Help system built into TruE™ 3 Modify .
   
   The Draw sliders above and below the thread color preview show or hide stitches as you drag them. Use these to help isolate individual sections of stitches to isolate for adding thread color changes, stops, or adding or removing stitches, and other editing for areas within a single thread color.


7. Click Draw Next Color Block to isolate the first thread color change.
   
   The thread color preview bar shows all the thread colors in bands. Thread colors are full color when visible or selected. If a thread color is hidden from view, its color is dimmed or faded.
   
   When a thread is visible, or selected, the Draw from beginning and Draw from end sliders move to bracket the selected or visible color, as shown in the illustration above, and the Start and End Stitches number boxes change to reflect only the visible stitches.


8. Click Draw Next Color Block several times to see how you step through the threads in the order they stitch.
   
   Click Draw Previous Color Block to step back toward the start of the embroidery, color by color.
   
   See how easy it is to view how the stitches appear in each part of the design? These flowers have several shading colors to enhance the depth of the embroidery's appearance.




9. Ghost Mode allows you to see the hidden stitches in the active design as a reference when working with selected areas of your embroidery. Ghost Mode is on by default when you first install TruE™ 3 Modify. To show or hide the unavailable stitches in the active design, simply click the Ghost Mode button . Ghost Mode toggles on and off each time the button is clicked.
   


10. When you want to see all the stitches in the active design, click Display All . Display All is a fast way to show all parts of the active design again when you have isolated stitches but aren't sure exactly what you have selected!
    
11. Don't forget to select Life View to preview how your new embroidery will stitch after you Export for Embroidery!

Editing selected elements of your embroidery design collection can be fast and fun when you know how to use the Control Strip in the TruE™ 3 Modify application!

Best wishes from TruEmbroidery™ 3 Software

PS: Watch for the TruEmbroidery™ 3 newsletter next month when we will design our own unique font using QuickFont.