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This guide contains everything important that you need to know about machine embroidery file formats. Besides teaching you what file formats your embroidery machine requires, we dive into the basics every embroiderer should know, covering his three main types of embroidery file formats.
What is an embroidery file format?
The embroidery file format is used to store embroidery designs for stitching on specific brands of embroidery machines. Certain embroidery machine brands require different file formats for embroidery designs.
When it comes to computers especially, we all know there are PCs and Mac computers. Certain programs and files are made to run only on PCs, and certain files are made to run only on Macs. This means certain programs and files are exclusive to PC or Mac-based operating systems. They walk one way or the other. The same applies to embroidery file formats. Certain embroidery file formats (e.g.
PES.) is the property of an independent embroidery machine brand.
1- Advanced file format
Some of the first extended formats I used were the .dst/Tajima and .exp/Melco formats. They still exist today, and almost all commercial or home market embroidery machines read one of these two formats. We will continue to provide these two formats if you wish to convert your designs for download (we have approximately 30,000 embroidery designs available on our website, click here to browse designs).
These files are always set to the machine/software default color, so a pink pig may default to green if that is the initial default color of the machine or software program.
2- machine file format
When creating and selling digitized designs commercially, use the software's native format and offer the customer either that (if they have the same program) or the .dst/.exp format. That's it! In the Cottage industry, there was a native format for each program and different versions of the machine format for every machine from different brands. I went from offering at most three formats to creating what I call Top Eleven.
3- Native file format
A native file format is created in your own embroidery/digitizing software. Many of these formats cannot be read by any embroidery machine. They are specific to the software program and are created within it. After creating a design in an embroidery software program as its native file format, it is often necessary to export it to a machine file format so that it can be read and used by the embroidery machine.
Users often import a .pes file into their software and save it in the native software format, which is actually not a true native file. It has been transformed, and some of the original data may have been lost during translation.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you clealry understand the complex world of machine embroidery file formats. You can grasp many things at once, but the advantage is that there are only three main types of embroidery machine formats. As mentioned throughout the article, regardless of which embroidery machine you own, Hatch embroidery software is the perfect all-in-one solution to edit and convert designs and file formats easily.