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Thred User`s Manual

1. G key Hit the G key This puts you in group select mode and fixes one end of your group selection Then use the arrow keys to move the other end Shift arrow Hold down a shift key and hit an arrow key This has the same effect as hitting the G but it also moves the unfixed end of your group selection You may then use the arrow keys with or without the shift to further adjust the selection Shift nome Hold down a shift key and hit home Thred will move the unfixed end of your selection to the beginning of the color Shift end Hold down a shift key and hit end Thred will move the unfixed end of your selection to the end of the color Shift right Hold down a shift key and right click near another stitch point click Thred will group select from you original selection to the stitch near your right click Use the arrow keys to fine tune your selection Shift right Hold down a shift key and right click near another point on the click on the color bar Thred will group select from your original selection to color bar the stitch near your right click Use the arrow keys to fine tune your selection while continuing to hold down the Shift key Box select Click on the Box Select box at the left of your screen directly under the pick color tool The mouse cursor will change into a cross Left click and drag to draw a box around your origina
2. If you use a monochrome bitmap Thred makes the background color the same as the stitch window background color You can set the foreground color by choosing Set then bitmap color from the view menu If you use a color bitmap Thred just loads the colors from the bitmap directly Larger bitmaps give better resolution and better registration between the bitmap and your stitches but if you make the bitmaps too large your computer may run out of memory and load them very slowly Large bitmaps may also show some spurious colors when not zoomed because of the way windows resizes the bitmaps When you zoom in these spurious colors will disappear If you change the size of your hoop and reload the bitmap the bitmap and stitch registration will be lost Save Bit Map This function only works when you have a 24 bit color bitmap loaded Thred will save the bitmap as you see it on the screen Hide Bitmap X Shift Hides or shows the bitmap but doesn t delete the file When you finish a design you should hide the bitmap Remove Bitmap Removes the bitmap from the design but doesn t delete it from the hard disk Delete Backups The Backups for the selected file option deletes backup files with the same name as the loaded file The All backups in the selected directory option deletes all the backup files in the selected directory You should do this periodically to avoid accumulating unwanted data in your directori
3. Thred uses an exclusive OR technique to write these lines That means that if any of the lines happen to be right on top of each other they will disappear Its a situation where one plus one equals zero Forms on different layers use a different logic so you can still see them when you have two forms from different layers Forms on different layers will have different colors The colors will vary according to how you have your background color and thread colors set Since most of the form line goes across the background color the background color determines the color of form lines most of the time If you have two forms on the same layer that have all the same points you won t be able to see either one though you will be able to see any stitches belonging to the forms So if your form suddenly disappears from the screen check to see if you actually have two just alike on top of each other You can tell what forms you have in the design by first hitting Esc to get out of any other functions you may have put the program into and then hitting the up arrow key That will take you to the first form and each time you hit the up arrow key again you will select the next form You can see the form number on the left of the screen above the stitch count number We don t think canceling forms will be a problem but if you suspect it is happening in your design just select any form and use the up and down arrow keys to select the next or
4. Save As options are also found under File We encourage you to save your work frequently Thred keeps up to four of the most recent versions you have saved When you save a file Thred makes a copy in PCS or DST format and one in THR format Only the Thred file will have the forms in it If you want to use a form to make changes after you have saved as PCS in PCD you can do it by using insert file or the Windows clipboard If a file already exists with the chosen file name Thred renames that file with the extension ths Ifa file called ths already exists the ths file will be renamed tht If a tht file exists it will be renamed thu You will have up to four backup files of any given design name You may remove unneeded back up copies of your design or of all the designs in a folder by using the Delete backups command located under File Since DST files have no color information when Thred is saving a DST file it also makes a file with the same name but with a thw extension The thw file contains the color information from the Thred file Save As F8 Allows you to select the name and directory and file type of the file you are saving Loading a bit map Thred requires a Windows Bitmap File BMP Any graphics program should make such a bitmap Designs may be scanned or drawn in the graphics program of choice then saved as Windows bitmaps The bitmap needs to be in the same directory as the Thred file you are working on
5. a form groups of forms or groups of stitches Copy forms to several layers and fill the copies with different fills or borders Center several stacked forms Fill Types Form Fill Description Type Fan You can use Teflon lines D key and fan guidelines to control the spacing of the fan fill to create various fan like effects This feature is one way to create stabilizing underlay quickly A line form on which you run Convert to Satin Ribbon will be set up with fan guidelines automatically If you have your preference numbers set so the maximum length is longer than the form is wide the result will look like satin stitches To make a curved line of satin stitches that is not the same width for its entire length use a line form and Convert to Ribbon Feather Similar to the fan fill except the lines of stitches can be controlled in various ways Convert to Feather Ribbon works like Convert to Satin Ribbon except that the resulting form is automatically filled with the feather fill Vertical Fills a form with sequenced vertical stitches You can use the Form Form to easily control the spacing size and color of the stitches Horizontal Similar to the vertical fill Angle Similar to the vertical but you can choose the angle Clipboard Cut or copy some stitches on the Windows clipboard and use them for a fill Contour The fill follows the contour set by the sides of t
6. can improve the fill sequence To set the form zero point put your mouse cursor near the point you want to become the new zero point Hit the Y key You should then see a cross at the point Go to the edit menu and select set form zero point You should see a larger node box at the zero point of a form Set Knots Automatically sets knots on any stitch longer than 9 mm If you want to use this function for color changes you should set long stitches between your colors If you have view Knots turned on you will see a small box with a horizontal line where each knot is set You can hide the forms using frm or the K key to make the knots easier to see See also edit Delete Knots Set Knot at Selected Stitch K Cntrl Sets a knot at the selected stitch Set Order Mark Period key Sets a mark for moving stitches in the stitch sequence See the section on move to mark on under edit menu for an explanation of how to re arrange the stitch sequence Note that this mark is different from the zoom mark which can only be set by hitting the M key Set Zoom Mark at Center M Shift Sets a zoom mark at the center of the stitch window m plus Shift is a keyboard shortcut for this command Set Zoom Mark at Selected Point M Control Sets a zoom mark on a selected form or stitch point m plus Control is the keyboard shortcut for this command Set Range Ends for Clipboard Fills Thi
7. can set the place where a form will start to fill or end the fill Edit Select Menu Selects Form Stitches All stitches associated with a form Form Fill Stitches Only the main fill not the border fill or applique Form Border Only the border fill Stitches Form Only the appliqu Appliqu Stitches D 6b After you have done this hit the T right bracket key and the last stitch in the previously selected group will be selected and you can see where it is Clipboard Form Fills As you might expect the clipboard form fills fill a form with data from the clipboard The discussion of how to prepare data for a clipboard fill in Clipboard border fill also applies to clipboard form fills and picot border fills Clipboard fan fill The stitches from the clipboard are stretched using the same method used in the fan fill You can control the clipboard form fill with guidelines just as in the fan fill Clipboard vertical fill The stitches from the clipboard are arranged in a regular pattern inside the form You can control the spacing between columns of the fill with Vert Clipboard Offset from the preferences menu You can also set this offset by entering a number into the Fill Spacing on the form data box This offset can be positive or negative so that you can create overlapping fills Clipboard horizontal fill This one is just like the Clipboard vertical fill except that it is
8. data box will also change to reflect the new settings you have selected This box was Called the form form in previous versions but we got tired of the joke Minimum Stitch Length The minimum stitch setting in the form data box may have effects that you may not expect If you have missing stitches in your fill be sure to check this setting Setting the value to zero will make sure this setting has no effect In version 1 1 we introduced putting a minimum stitch length in each form If you want to Thred to behave as in previous versions you might want to set the pref Stitch Length Minimum to zero Stitch Window Your designs will appear in this window As you make changes they will be updated Most of this manual is devoted to describing the stitch window or items that interact with the stitch window Information Boxes Box Select Thumbnail Text If you left click on Box Select and then left drag the cursor from the starting place to the end of the area you want to select you will see a box The select box function will attempt to select items in the box when you release the left mouse button The exact items to be selected vary according to what you already have selected and what is within the select box When stitches are selected they are always a range of stitches starting with a first stitch inside the box and including all stitches connected to the first stitch that are inside the box Thred will groups of stitches
9. from the place where the fill ends to the point you set If the form is line form the stitches will be set along the border of the form If the form is freehand the stitches set from the end point to the end of the fill will be set along a line that is indented from the edge of the form The amount of indent can be set using the indent variable on the form data box The stitches set by this function will be stitched after the form fill has stitched but before the border is stitched Nudge arrow keys control Nudge length is controlled by the Nudge on the preference menu and view Set Nudge Pixels The exact behavior of this function depends on what is selected If anything is selected it is moved by the Nudge If nothing is selected the cursor is moved by the nudge pixels Color Management When you use the edit sort functions Thred always sorts your design according to the color order on the color controls on the left of the Thred window The color management functions allow you to change the order of these colors When you use the color management functions Thred automatically updates the colors in the forms and stitches in your design Switch Colors To switch the order of two colors put your mouse cursor over one of the color boxes on the far left of the Thred window Then hold down the left mouse button and move your cursor to another one of these color boxes Thred will switch the two colors This f
10. hit U Shows all pixels brighter than the pixel under the mouse cursor Finds edges in a loaded bitmap U Shft Move the view up one page Up Arrow If a stitch is selected moves the selection to the previous stitch of a different kind Up Arrow If a form is selected moves the selection to the next form If no _ form is selected selects form 0 Forms are numbered as they are entered Up Control__ Nudge Moves things up Vs Show 4 stitches nearest to the mouse cursor Insert a point in a form Hold the cursor near the point you want to select and hit W e a S X Cnitrl If a range of stitches a form or a group of forms is selected deletes it and pastes it to the clipboard Select a form point Hold the mouse cursor near the point you want to select and hit Y Zoom in If the mark is set the mark becomes the center of zoom or if a stitch form is selected that stitch or form becomes the center of zoom otherwise the mouse position determines the center of zoom If the mouse cursor is not in the stitch Z Cntrl window the center of the stitch window becomes the center of the zoom Z Cntrl Z Shift Zoom all the way in Index 1 2 3 4 8 75 About Thred 42 Add End Control 74 All 75 angle fill 7 33 58 66 68 70 Angle Fill 66 angle satin 12 58 70 Angle Satin 12 63 70 71 appliqu 12 38 52 55 57 58 60 63 67 71 Appliqu 12 52 55 57 63 67 70 71 Bean Borders 7
11. inside the box and select the longest one When forms are selected all forms that are completely within the box are selected If you are setting stitches with the needle cursor or the cross cursor you need to click on the Box Select but if you have any other cursor selected you can just left click and drag to get the select box Selection Logic Table Already In the Box Action Selected Nothing Nothing No action Stitches Selects a range starting with the first stitch in the stitch order that is in the box and ending with the last connected stitch that is in the box Forms Selects all forms completely within the Forms and boundaries of the box Stitches A single Nothing De selects the selected stitch stitch Forms The Selected Selects all stitches connected to the originally Stitch selected stitch that are in the box Stitches Selects a range starting with the first stitch in the Forms and stitch order that is in the box and ending with the Stitches last connected stitch that is in the box A range of Nothing De selects the selected range stitches The Selected Expands the selected range to the edges of the Range select box Stitches Selects a range starting with the first stitch in the stitch order that is in the box and ending with the last connected stitch that is in the box Forms and Selects the forms Stitches Forms Nothing De selects the sele
12. one under the mouse cursor See Trace mode Deselect stitches and return to move mode njo Shift the view The view is shifted so that place under the mouse cursor when the shift key is hit becomes the new center of the screen Move the cursor toward the area you want to see and hit S Space Hit space to enter insert stitch setting mode Stitches will be set or go into the stitch order following the selected stitch when you left click the mouse while in this mode If no stitch is selected insert will be at a stitch under the mouse cursor If there is no stitch under the mouse cursor insert mode will not be entered If you are in insert mode hitting space will put you back to move mode Right click or hit the esc key to quit adding stitches Put your cursor near the edge of an object on a bitmap and hit U Thred will show all the pixels in the bitmap brighter than the one under the mouse cursor See Trace mode Show the four stitches closest to the mouse cursor Thred draws a different color and size of box around each stitch so you can tell at a glance when you have up to four stacked stitches Hold the mouse cursor near a form point and hit W Thred will insert a form point at the cursor position Select a form point near the mouse cursor N lt LA Z zooms in A zooms out F Comma Join two forms Select one form then hold the mo
13. orientation Rotates the selected form or range of stitches in a counter clockwise direction by the amount set by Rotate Command from the edit menu Rotates the selected form or range of stitches in a counter clockwise direction by the amount set by Rotate Command from the edit menu Leaves a copy of the selected form or range of stitches in the original orientation See Rotating Used to set an order mark for changing the sequence of stitches Deselect stitches and return to move mode Capture cursor Sets bits in the stitch window where the cursor is This is used for making Thred tutorials based on screen shots The next time the stitch window is redrawn the captured cursor will disappear The cursor may appear to disappear when you use this function but it should be in the captured bitmap Set Rotate Segments R Control Set Rotate Angle R Shift Set Rotation Angle From Mark Enters a rotation angle that will make a complete circle of the selected items R Shift Cntrl Redraw the screen Return Used to terminate entry in dialog boxes Right arrow If a stitch is selected moves the selection to the next stitch Ifa form point is selected moves the selection to the next form point Right arrow Nudge Moves things right Control Right arrow Same as right arrow but also selects a range of points when a Shift stitch is selected Right bracket If you have a form selected hold down the shift key and hit t
14. point If the form is a polygon then there must be an interior satin guideline d line at the form point you selected in order to split the form Trace You must have a bitmap loaded to use Thred Interactive Auto Trace functions See Interactive Auto Trace Find Edges H control Makes the pixels that are most different from their neighboring pixels brightest Pixels that are exactly like all the neighboring pixels will become black Hide Bitmap X shift Hides or shows the bitmap Select Colors H Takes each pixel in turn and checks to see which color is brightest Then it deletes the other two colors Trace Mode T control Puts Thred in the trace mode Show Traced Edges right or left mouse click on the stitch window Shows the traced edges of bitmap If the bitmap you are working with is large YOU MAY HAVE TO ZOOM IN to see the edge bitmap Ungroup left bracket First right bracket Last This item is for use when you have a group of stitches selected Selecting First will remove the group selection and select the individual stitch in the group that is first in the stitch order Selecting Last will remove the group selection and select the individual stitch in the group that is last in the stitch order IN Z or Z Shift A left click here makes the view zoom in to the selected area or mark Make a mark by placing the cursor and hitting the M key The will appear on the s
15. previous form in the form table The form number will appear in the select box above the stitch count number and below pick color and the form select rectangle will be drawn on your screen If you see a form rectangle and no form and you have selected all from the Thred menu then you probably have two identical forms on the same layer Form lines may be more difficult to see on some background colors than others A gray color where all the RGB values of the color are the same probably works best for visibility but some of us prefer to look at other colors You can use the Windows Color box to change the background color at any time Select View Set background color and when the box with colors comes onscreen choose one of the basic colors the custom colors we made or make your own by selecting Define custom colors The same box is used for Bitmap colors To change those select View Set bitmap color The form data box also called the form form The form data box appears in the stitch window when you select a form and hit the F key or select form from the main menu You can use the form data box to change properties of the form The exact content of the form data box will change depending on the form type form fill border fill etc In general you can click on the right hand side of the form data box to change values and your change will immediately be made in the form you have selected and the form
16. range of pixels in that color Below the color select ribbons are on off buttons that turn the ribbons on and off If the ribbons are turned off they have no effect on the pixels that are selected Left clicking on these buttons turns them on and off Below the on off buttons are two rows of number boxes that show the same information in the color select ribbons but in numerical form Left click on these buttons to change the numbers The top row of numbers shows the high limit of color values selected and the bottom row of numbers shows the low limit The following table shows the functions of the seven buttons available in trace mode These buttons are below the number boxes Trace Mode Buttons len Length When you are creating a form from the edge bitmap Thred starts with a pixel close to the mouse cursor It then takes each pixel in turn and checks to see how far it is from the original pixel If it is further than the number entered in the length box it creates a form point To change this number left click on the length box pnts Point After Thred has created form points it deletes those that are nearly in a straight line The higher the number in the point info box the fewer points will be deleted Change this number by left clicking on the box find Find Edges Similar to the find edges functions in other graphics edges programs It makes the pixels that are most different from their neighboring pixels bri
17. the basic colors or choose the option define custom colors When the define custom colors option is selected the Windows color bar appears The user may select a custom color box to be filled and then move the cursor to change the selected color click to add it to custom color selection and then click OK Or simply click OK and the color will be applied but not saved The background color will be saved with the design The background and bitmap colors are saved in the INI file which can be found and manipulated using the Windows Explorer Set Bitmap Color The Windows color box drops when you left click on the Set Color option You may select the bitmap color for monochrome bitmaps in the same way as the background color See above paragraph Set Data Check See also repair data If this function is turned on Thred checks the data for form points clipboard fills d lines and texture fills every time the design is changed These data lists becoming corrupted caused many of the problems we have encountered in previous version of Thred After the data becomes corrupted it may be several edits later that the user sees the effects of that corruption We put in this function to assist with debugging The sooner we know when the program has made an error the easier it is to eliminate the bug If you turn this function on and then get an error please write us an email at mrck charter net describing what you were doing when you got
18. the data you are pasting to the clipboard you will get a line of stitches around your border If you put the beginning and ending stitches to the left and right of the clipboard you will get a fill with no line You can use Set Range Ends for Clipboard Fills to adjust the beginning and ending stitches to midpoints of the vertical sides of the rectangle enclosing the clipboard data If you have trouble visualizing that we suggest you try the function on a selected range of stitches and you will easily see what it does It has the effect of eliminating sideways jags and jogs when using the clipboard border fill Fan Fill Create a form by hitting the F key then selecting Line or Free Hand and left clicking at each point where you need a node or you can use a Regular Polygon Star or Spiral Once you have completed the form hit escape or Q to change to the fill mode Right click to select the form and then hit fill on the task bar You will see a drop box with options You can enter a new point in a form by holding your mouse near a point on an existing form and hitting W To enter multiple points hit E You can enter a guideline in a polygon form by holding your mouse near an existing point and hitting D The guideline will dictate the direction of fill stitches If there is already a guideline at that point it will be deleted and you need to hit D again to enter another one A gu
19. the range are moved to the edge of the stitch window Convert Convert to Feather Ribbon F shift Works like the Convert to Satin Ribbon below except that the form is automatically filled with a feather fill Convert to Satin Ribbon C shift Converts any selected form to a ribbon drawn along the outside edge of the form Thred automatically inserts guidelines into the form and fills it with fan fill Technically the ribbon form is no different from a similar from created and edited by hand After converting the form to a ribbon you can then proceed to edit the ribbon just like you would edit any other form If you fill it with a Fan fill and have the preferences set for longer stitches than the form s width you will get a result like satin border fill Sharply curved forms may require editing by hand Convert to Bean Converts line stitches to bean stitches If a range of stitches is selected converts the stitches in the selected range If no range of stitches is selected converts the entire design Convert from Bean to Line Converts bean stitches back to simple line stitches If a range of stitches is selected converts the stitches in the range If a range of stitches is not selected converts all stitches in the design Bean stitches to be converted must be exactly positioned If they have been done with a bean border fill or convert to bean they will be exactly positioned If they have been done by ha
20. the right Twist Ratio After each pair of the points in the tear tail has been placed the twist step is multiplied by this ratio The new twist step is added to the horizontal position of the next pair of points in the tear tail OK Closes the dialog box and creates a form Wave Form The wave form is made by joining pieces of regular polygons You can choose the number of points in the polygon and the start point and end point of the piece of the polygon you want to use You can also choose the number of polygons to join Wave Form Dialog Box Controls Points Sets the number of points in the polygon used to make the wave form Start Sets the beginning point of the portion of the polygon End Sets the last point of the portion of the polygon Waves The number of portions of polygons to join together Default Default settings for a wave form Wave form Daisy form The daisy form creates some flower like shapes and some that are not recognizable as flowers at all Daisy Form Dialog Box Controls Petals Sets the number of petals Petal Points Sets the number of points in the outer part of a petal Mirror When the mirror petal type is selected Thred draws a petal as it Points would with the curve setting but only goes up to the mirror point and then it starts drawing the same curve backwards If the mirror point is more
21. the segments of the design that are filled with that color number If you want to change the color of part of the design select it and then left click on the left color box the ordinal color This will make the selected stitches turn that color number Then the screen will show whatever color you have defined as that color number and will change if you change the custom color This lets you preview colors choices without stitching out the design You may also change the color of segments by selecting the form with which the stitches were made then hitting the F key A small drop box called the Form Form comes on screen with data about those stitches A left click on the first entry for the type of form will make it change to the other type of form and remove all the fill data leaving you with a blank form ready to refill Undo it if that was not what you wanted If you left click on border you will see a drop box with a list of border types A left click on one of those will change the border fill to that kind Border color border spacing and border size each have a number box Click on the current number and a box appears If you type a number into the box the program will change the border to that color that spacing or that width as the case may be Hit enter to complete the entry You can also change colors by left clicking on a color entry and then left clicking on the ordinal color bar Then you may hit Q
22. the star with stitches Bean stitches repeat three times as they stitch out with a forward back forward motion In order for this to stitch correctly in a straight line the end must be opposite the beginning but for border fills this isn t desirable The star as it is originally drawn is much too big to use for a clipboard fill You need to shrink it down usually until the lines of the star are around two millimeters in length To make the star smaller you should left drag a corner of the select box Near the lower left corner of the Thred screen you will see two boxes with min and max written in them These boxes tell you the minimum and maximum size of the stitches in the form you have selected Because Thred will fill in the form with stitches as close as possible to the user stitch size set in the preferences the boxes may say approximately two millimeters when the sides of the star are much larger than that To make sure the sides of the star are actually around two millimeters in length shrink the star until the min and max boxes show numbers less than two With the form selected hit the Z key until the star fills the screen If you wish to zoom back out one step hit the A key Then drag the corner of the select box until the min and max are less than two millimeters Then drag the corner of the select box out to make the star larger until the min and max numbers are around two Now you may want to adjust
23. the stitches in the star so that the beginning and ending stitch are at the same place In this case we will put them at the bottom Select frm from the menu or hit the K key to hide the form You need to do this so you can set a stitch at the form point otherwise Thred will think you re trying to move the form point Hit the home key Thred will draw a stitch select box around the first stitch in the stitch window which should be at the bottom of the star Hit the end key Thred will draw a select box around the last stitch in the stitch window which should be to the left and up from the bottom of the star It is not actually necessary to do the home and end key in this case but it can be useful in finding the beginning and end stitches when you are trying to create other clipboard fills Hit F2 or choose Snap together from the edit menu to align the stitch you have placed exactly with the beginning stitch Hit control A to select all the stitches and then control X to put them on the clipboard Now you are ready to create a form and fill it with a clipboard border Once you have had some practice you should be able to do this whole procedure in just a few seconds Clipboard Borders are versatile but you may need practice to have predictable results It may be best to use straight sided forms before you experiment with curved ones A clipboard border fill will differ depending on the number of nod
24. understand how the vertical fill works since you only need to imagine your form rotated to understand the angle and horizontal fills The vertical fill starts on the left side of the form and continues until it paints itself into a corner then it makes stitches on top of the stitches already laid down until it gets to an unfilled area of the form At the end of the process it flips the order of the stitches so that the stitches that were put on top of the previous stitches are now on the bottom This means that for a simple form that can be stitched without backtracking the vertical fill will start on the right of the form and end on the left The horizontal fill will start on the bottom of the form and end on the top The angle fill starting and ending points will vary with the angle Some forms are complex enough that the program presently can t figure out how to fill them without jump stitches This is not easy to fix but if there is enough interest in Thred to justify the effort we will do it for future versions Thred can fill forms with lines that cross Predicting how complex forms will fill can be difficult It is probably easier to fill the forms and see where the end is and then unfill them if necessary Where will a fill end This is the way you find out where the last stitch in a fill is Select the form Using the select option from the edit menu select the group of stitches you are interested in You
25. will be as close as possible to the user stitch length Set Machine File Type Sets the type of the machine file that is saved every time the user saves a THR file to Pfaff PCS or Tajima DST Set Needle Cursor Turns the rotating needle cursor on or off If the needle cursor is turned off the cursor becomes a cross when entering stitches Set Nudge Pixels Sets the pixels nudge arrow keys control moves the cursor when nothing is selected Set PCS Bitmap Save If this feature is on Thred will save the bitmap file name with PCS files If it is off Thred will not save the bitmap file name with PCS files Set Point Size Stitch Point boxes Sets the size of stitch point boxes Form Point Triangles Sets the size of the form point triangles Set Remove Mark When this is set to Q the mark will be removed when the user hits the Q key or the Escape key If it is set to Escape the mark will only be removed when the user hits the Escape key Set Rotate Machine File Rotates the machine file 90 degrees when it is saved Using this setting you can work on a design in a convenient orientation when you need to stitch it out rotated 90 degrees from that orientation When rotate machine file is set to on Thred will show a message saying the machine file was rotated each time it is saved Set Warn if Edited If you manually edit a stitch in a form fill then refill the form Thred wi
26. 0 BH 12 63 70 71 border fills 9 54 63 67 72 73 Border Fills 63 70 border types 16 Border Types 12 Border Width 58 Box Select Thumbnail Text 19 Center Both Minus 46 Center Entire Design 46 Center Forms 46 Center Horizontal Minus Shift 46 Center of Zoom Table 22 Center Vertical Minus Control 46 Center Walk 32 Center 46 54 Chain borders 74 Chain Fill Length 58 Chain Fill Position 58 Changing the bitmap image 30 Check Range 47 Clipboard angle fill 68 Clipboard Border Even 74 Clipboard Border 55 71 Clipboard fan fill 67 Clipboard Form Fills 67 Clipboard horizontal fill 67 Clipboard Offset 58 Clipboard Phase 58 Clipboard vertical fill 67 Close 35 color bar 15 16 24 25 26 35 38 52 58 Color Bar 15 Color Management 33 Color Ribbon 17 Command Mode Rotate 26 Command 52 Contour Fill 68 Convert from Bean to Line 47 Convert from Stitches to Form 47 Convert to Bean 47 Convert to Satin Ribbon C shift 47 Convert 47 Coordinate Window 21 Copy Colors 34 Copy to Layer 47 Crop to Form W Shift 47 Daisy form 45 Delete All Forms and Stitches 49 Delete All Forms 48 Delete All Stitches 48 Delete Backups 37 Delete Color 34 Delete Free stitches 48 Delete Knots 48 Delete Large stitches 48 Delete Small stitches 48 Delete 48 Design Information apostrophe 42 Disappearing Forms 27
27. 42 Shrink Clipboard Border 55 Small Stitch Size 60 Snap Together F2 55 Snap 55 Snap To Size 60 Sort by Color then Form F3 Shift 56 Sort by form F3 Control 56 Spiral Wrap 61 Split Form 56 Star Ratio 61 Stitch Box Cutoff 61 stitch editing 27 Stitch Editing 21 Stitch Length Maximum 61 Stitch Length Minimum 61 Stitch Length User 61 stitch window 6 18 19 21 23 24 28 29 32 36 37 46 47 51 54 56 73 79 80 81 Stitch Window 15 19 36 Switch Color Values 34 Switch Colors 34 Tear Form 43 Texture Fill 68 The form form 18 Thread Size 41 THRED MENUS 34 Thred User s Manual 1 9 Thred Window 15 17 Thumbnails T 35 Total 21 Trace functions and mouse clicks 31 Trace Mode T control 56 Trace 28 56 Tracing 24 bit color bitmaps 28 Tracing monochrome bitmaps 28 UNDERLAY FOR FILLS 32 Underlay 33 60 Undo B or Z Control 57 Unfill 74 Up TO Off ON keypad 20 Using the trace control panel 29 vertical fill 7 11 49 62 66 67 68 Vertical Fill 66 View Backups 41 VIEW 38 Wave Form 44 Where will a fill end 67 Zoom and shift 22 Zoom Full X 41 zooming 22 Zooming 22
28. A or X 57 Overlay 36 perpendicular satin 60 70 Perpendicular Satin 12 63 70 71 PES2Card W Control 36 Pick color 20 Picot Borders 74 Picot Spacing 60 Redo 57 Refill All J 51 Reset colors 51 Retrace 51 Retrieve Clipboard Stitches F4 51 Retrieve Mark B Shift 42 Rotate Again Page Up Page Down 52 Rotate And Duplicate 52 Rotate 26 52 Rotating 26 Satin Form Ends 60 Satin Underlay 60 Save As F8 36 Save Bit Map 37 Saving the bitmap 30 Screen colors 17 search this document 9 Search this document 9 Select Colors H 56 Select 20 39 48 52 Selecting groups of stitches 25 Selecting single stitches 24 Selection Logic Table 19 Set Background Color 38 Set Bitmap Color 38 Set Default Preferences 39 Set design size 53 Set Fill at Select 39 Set Form Color to Stitch Color 55 Set Form Cursor 39 Set Form Number 54 Set Form Zero Point 53 Set Grid Mask 39 Set Knots 53 Set Line Border Spacing 40 Set Machine File Type 39 40 Set Needle Cursor 40 Set Nudge Pixels 40 Set Order Mark Period 54 Period key 54 Set PCS Bitmap Save 41 Set Point Size 41 Set Range Ends for Clipboard Fills 54 Set Remove Mark 41 Set Rotate Machine File 41 Set Rotation Angle R Control 54 Set Rotation segments R 54 Set Rotation 54 Set 38 53 Setting stitches 23 Shifting 23 Show Threads for selected color 42 Show Threads
29. Double Borders 74 Edge walk 32 EDIT 46 Editing Groups of Form Points 27 fan fill 7 67 Fan Fill 63 feather fill 11 47 64 65 Feather Fill 64 file 3 34 36 FILE 34 Fill Angle 58 Fill Ends 59 Fill Spacing 58 Fill Types 11 FILL 62 Find Edges H control 56 Flip Horizontal 49 Flip Order 49 Flip Vertical 49 Flip 49 FORM F 42 Form End 33 Form Preferences 46 Form Start 33 Form Update 49 Forms 26 27 46 48 Frm K 74 Grid Cutoff 59 Grid size 59 Help 75 Hide Bitmap X shift 56 Hide Bitmap X Shift 37 Hiding the bitmap 30 Hoop Height 59 Hoop Type 59 Hoop Width 60 horizontal fill 7 53 66 67 Horizontal Fill 66 If you have a form selected 46 Importing stitches into the texture editor 68 Z or Z Shift 57 Information Boxes 15 19 Information boxes in thumbnail mode 21 Insert Color 34 Insert 36 Install Thred in your computer 9 Interactive Auto Trace 28 keyboard shortcuts 13 76 Keyboard Shortcuts 76 Keyboard Shortcuts 76 Layers 21 Line Borders 70 Loading a bit map 37 Locking 37 Maximum Stitch Length 21 61 Minimum stitch Length 21 Minimum Stitch Length 18 MouseKey Table 13 Move To End 51 Move To Layer 51 Move To Mark 51 Move To Start 50 Move 50 Movie 1 38 New 34 No Form Selected 42 Nudge arrow keys control 33 Open PCS DST file 36 Opening a file O 34 OUT
30. This would be due to floating point arithmetic errors made by the computer The arithmetic precision could be made better but the file size increases with precision The programmer hopes that you would prefer to edit this border rather than have the entire program run slowly and take up more memory space Clipboard Border Even The even clipboard border tries to fill the border of the form with an even number of clips It tries up to 100 different lengths of clip to find the best fit It may stretch or shrink the clip slightly The last clip will be stretched or shrunk to finish out the form border This fill works best on forms without sharp corners Picot Borders The Picot fill combines features of clipboard and buttonhole borders The program will place a clip from the Windows clipboard at the tip of a buttonhole style perpendicular stitch Read the sections under buttonhole and clipboard to understand those terms The satin border size must be smaller than the maximum stitch length to use this border fill Button corner length user stitch length satin border size and maximum stitch length all affect the look of this border and can be set in the Preferences drop box Double Borders The double border is just like a line border except that it doubles back on itself retracing the same stitch points If you use this in a line fill you can make lines of stitches that start and end on the same point This is handy
31. Thred User s Manual http Awww thredworks com REVISED 11 25 03 2000 Alfie and Marion McCoskey 1201 Locust Ave Shasta Lake CA 96019 Install Thred in your computer Search this document Thred User s Manual Fill Types Border Types MouseKey Table Thred Window Color Bar Color Ribbon Screen colors The form data box also called the form form Minimum Stitch Length Stitch Window Information Boxes Box Select Thumbnail Text Selection Logic Table Up TO Off ON keypad Pick color Select Total Maximum Stitch Length Minimum stitch Length Coordinate Window Layers Information boxes in thumbnail mode Stitch Editing Zoom and shift Center of Zoom Table Shifting Hiding the bitmap Trace functions and mouse clicks UNDERLAY FOR FILLS Center Walk Insert Color Delete Color achine File ted Thread Size Show Threads Show Threads for selected color About Thred Reset nie Retrace e Up or Down Shift Grid size gth Fan Fill Feather Fill Vertical Fill Horizontal Fill Ciboa h ce l Contour Fill Texture Fill Retrieving texture fill data from a form HOBO stitches into the texture editor Chain e Unfill Add End Control Install Thred
32. ain screen under the dual color bars If you happened to have 20 different rose files in your directory then you can go to the thumbnail mode type rose and then use the up and down arrow keys or the page up and page down keys to scroll through the rose files until you find the one you want Then just left click on the thumbnail to load the file or right click to insert it into your current design Open PCS DST file Opens a PCS or DST file This menu item will change according to the machine file type selected PES2Card W Control Calls the PES2Card software You must have a PES2Card Reader Writer Box installed to use this function Thred saves the file you have loaded then calls the PES2Card Software and adds the file to the PES2Card list so you can write it to a sewing machine card or floppy The card and file formats supported depend on the exact model of the PES2Card you have installed Insert Select insert to insert a file from the disk into a file that your currently have open for editing After you have selected the file to insert you will see a box in the Stitch Window Drag the box to where you want to insert the file and left click The new file will use color information from the file you originally had open Overlay This command works just like file insert except that the overlaid file is placed at coordinates 0 0 in the lower left corner of the stitch window Save S Control The Save and
33. aking usable stitch groups to put on the clipboard The code for spacing picots adds the spacing number you enter here to the width of the picot on the clipboard and divides the horizontal length width of the form to determine how many picots it can fit in See fill oorder picot below Satin Form Ends Toggle between tapered or blunt ends for perpendicular satin stitch borders The length of the distance between the two form points closest to the end of a form will determine how much it tapers You should experiment to see this This setting also affects the convert to satin ribbon function Satin Underlay If this feature is on all newly filled satin and appliqu borders will have an underlay If it is off they will have no underlay You can add or remove underlay to satin or appliqu borders using the form data box Small Stitch Size This is the place where you set the value for the remove small stitches function This number should be smaller than the stitch spacing or you will remove the fill stitches from your design The remove small stitches function is useful but should be used carefully If you do not like the results use undo or open one of the back up versions of your file Use View backups If you have used the Edit set knots command and then run remove small stitches you will have to run set knots again Set knots will not set a knot where one already exists Snap To Size Set the s
34. also turn of the forms using Frm D Draw or delete a satin guideline to control the direction the stitches go in fan fill The line will start at the form point closest to the mouse cursor When you use Convert to ribbon to make satin stitches from a line form moving the D lines will change the angle of the satin stitches This is the way to have the greatest control over your satin stitches although the satin fills on the menu are easier to use Delete If a form a stitch or a range of stitches is selected this command deletes the selected item If nothing is selected it deletes a form point near the mouse cursor E Hold the mouse cursor near a form point and hit E Then you can insert multiple form points Right click elsewhere or hit Q to exit this mode F Form If a form is selected shows the form data box which we have also called the form form You can change a fill by changing the entries in the form data box If a form is not selected F shows a menu of forms to choose from M M Inserts a mark for zooming When this mark is visible it will be the center of zoom in or zoom out The mark can be deleted by hitting Q or escape Shift M will put a mark in the center of the screen Control M puts a mark at a selected point Put your cursor on a bitmap and hit U Thred will show all the pixels in the bitmap dimmer than the
35. any color background they will become invisible if you put two of them right on top of each other This can happen in various ways You can put forms directly on top of one another by doing a rotate and copy with a rotation angle of zero Or you can end up with two forms on top of one another if you are copying forms to different layers though there is some protection from this mishap provided by the fact that forms on different layers are drawn in slightly different colors If you suspect that you have lost a couple of forms there are three things you can do to find them If you know the approximate location of the lost forms use the box select to select the area they are in When the form is selected you will be able to see it Hit the up or down arrow to select the next form in the sequence Hit the apostrophe key or select Design Information from the view menu This will show the number of forms you have in your design Editing Groups of Form Points To select a form point hold the mouse cursor over the form point and hit the Y key or hold down the shift key and right click With a form point selected hit the left or right arrow key and a range of form points will be selected Or you can select one form point and then hold the mouse cursor over another form point hold down the shift key and right click and a group of form points will be selected This method only works if you want to select less than
36. ather ribbon Help Activates the main menu Delete small stitches Delete large stitches Exit Snap Together moves stitches that are close together to the same point Sorts colors and forms Sorts by form Sorts by color then form Retrieve Form Data If the selected form has a clipboard fill F4 stores the clipboard fill stitches to the clipboard If the selected form has a textured fill F4 moves the textured fill stitches to the texture editor Refill The form or forms must be selected Toggle View Threads Shows approximate thickness of threads when on Save Save As If a stitch is selected F9 selects the entire color Set the form number of the currently selected form Marks one end of a range to be selected A stitch must be selected before using this function After hitting the G key the left or right arrow keys will select a range of stitches Reset form pixels In trace mode sets all the pixels under a form line in a bitmap to black Select primary colors In trace modes show the primary colors of a bitmap H Shift Home Home Shift Home Cntrl Home Cntrl Shift Insert J J Shift K K Alt Control K Control K Shift Keypad minus L L Shift Left arrow Left arrow Control Left arrow Shift Left Bracket T Left Bracket E Shift M Move a zoomed design one screen to the left If a stitch is selected Home changes the selection to the fi
37. ave an angle fill with a mess on the corners zoom in close and move form points until you get a better result The width and stitch spacing are set under Preferences Perpendicular Satin This fill is similar to Angle Satin except this border makes curved corners and will keep the stitches perpendicular to the form line This is the satin border to choose for a form with complex curves The fill will not extend entirely to the tip of the form so you must adjust the form size to make it suit your needs Choose tapered or blunt fill ends in Preferences The number and placement of form nodes really affect the appearance of this fill so take time to edit the form well using the W key to add nodes and the Y to select those you wish to remove by selecting delete If the appearance is still not what you want you can adjust individual stitches by hitting Frm to turn off the form and then dragging the form points but once you have edited them do not refill your form or the edit will be lost Hit Frm to see the form again You can delete your form entirely and leave the stitches but it is wise to save as a new file name first just in case you want that exact form again Appliqu This one provides an underlay of simple line stitch repeated two times and a color stop before the satin stitches If you place a swatch of fabric over the hooped fabric before you begin to stitch the pattern you can cut away the excess
38. box If you want the edge walk to be outside the form put a negative number into the indent Put a minus sign in front of the number The indent also effects the underlay and how Thred retraces its steps when it has stitched itself into a corner doing a vertical or textured fill Underlay Underlay is an angle fill with square edges and an indent In most cases the indent is set so that the underlay doesn t quite go the edge of the form You can turn the underlay on or off using the form data box You can also use the form data box to set the indent spacing and angle and color Select the form and press F to get the form data box Fill Start Use the form data box data box to set the form start To get that box select the form and press F This function will change the start of the fill but it sets a line of stitches from the point you set to the place where the form fill starts If the form is a line form the stitches will be set along the border of the form If the form is freehand the stitches set from the start point to the start of the fill will be set along a line that is indented from the edge of the form The amount of indent can be set using the indent variable on the form data box Fill End Select the form and press F to get the form data box data box and use the form data box to set the form end This function will change the end of the fill but it does that by setting a line of stitches
39. creen and become the center of the zoom If nothing is selected you can draw a box by clicking and dragging using the left mouse button The Z key zooms but it automatically moves to the mouse position if nothing is selected Remove the mark by hitting Q See Zooming OUT A or X A left click here zooms out The A key does the same See Zooming Undo B or Z Control This function undoes the last action that changed form or stitch information Thred supports sixteen levels of undo Redo Thred supports sixteen levels of redo ROT Rotate Tab Select the entire design the form group of forms or stitch area you want to rotate then left click on the rotate command or hit the Tab key You will see a box over the selected area with a cross in the center of the box The cross is the center of rotation You can drag the center of rotation anywhere on the screen using the left mouse button To rotate left drag a spot other than the center of rotation and a handle will appear Drag the handle to rotate the selection to the desired position The cross is the center of rotation and you can drag it to relocate the center See also Rotating Also see Rotate on the Edit Menu PREF Preferences P To set preferences left click on the entry you want to change A box will appear to the right Type in the new number and then hit the enter key or right click anywhere on the screen When you finish changing th
40. cted forms Stitches Selects a range starting with the first stitch in the stitch order that is in the box and ending with the last connected stitch that is in the box Forms Selects all forms completely within the boundaries of the box Up TO Off ON keypad Toggle between off and on to see or hide the portion of the design that would come after the selected point Use the arrow keys to move forward or back If you have to edit an area select the first stitch and turn on the up to function Then use the right arrow key to watch each stitch until you reach the stitch you want to change The left arrow will move you through the stitches backward toward the starting stitch Check to see this is turned off if you have suddenly lost part of your design It can be a little startling Pick color Click on pick color to show only the stitches of a single color With pick color selected you can left click on the ordinal color boxes left row to select another color This is another feature that you should check if you have suddenly lost part of your design Select The select box is right below the pick color box If nothing is selected this box will be empty If a stitch is selected this box will show the stitch number Ifa form is selected the select box will show the form number If a form point is selected the form point number is shown If multiple forms are selected the select box w
41. dinal colors except for the appliqu color which is selected from the Preferences menu In each color it divides the stitches into segments Stitches that belong to a form are divided into border fill and form fill Stitches not belonging to a form are grouped together The sort starts with the first group of stitches and looks for the next closest group checking both ends If it finds it can make a shorter jump stitch it will reverse the stitching order of a segment except if the segment is a satin border or an appliqu border Appliqu stitches are stitched first of all in a design that has been sorted Note Thred may flip the order of a group of stitches that are not attached toa form while sorting the design This may put hand inserted underlay stitches on top rather than on the bottom You can remedy this by selecting the group of stitches and then selecting flip order When you sort check for this if you have removed your forms or manually punched underlay Sort by Color then Form F3 Shift Sorts the stitches by color and then by form number You can control the order of the stitching by using Edit Set Form Number Sort by form F3 Control Sorts the stitches by form number Split Form Hold the mouse cursor near the form point where you want to split the form and hit the Y key to select the form point If the form is a line form select edit Split Form and the form will be split into two at the selected
42. ds for hot key access to rotate the keyboard and rotate and duplicate commands Command Mode Rotate When using command mode rotate you can set a mark to indicate the center of rotation If you don t set the mark Thred sets the center of rotation at the center of the rotate selection For example if you have the rotate angle set at 60 degrees and you select a form and set a mark near the form then hit the Page up Shift key 5 times you can quickly create a perfect circle of forms centered on your mark Forms Forms are used to create edit and delete large groups of stitches The stitches are created when the forms are filled The forms are automatically refilled every time the form is edited Forms can be used to select move and delete groups of stitches Although forms are a powerful and useful tool they are not as clever as a good digitizer It is usually best to use forms to get your design set up close to the way you want it Then you can sort the design to get adequate sequencing Then you might want to copy the design to a new name and either turn off the forms go to the menu bar across the top of the screen and click frm or delete them and put in your finishing touches Some designs can be done entirely using forms and some users may prefer to do the design entirely without forms using Thred s excellent stitch editing capabilities Disappearing Forms Because forms are drawn so that they can be seen on
43. e color select ribbon the trace mode Hold down the Control key and hit T or select edit Trace Trace Mode If the user has set the pixel selection settings Thred filters the bitmap using these settings If the user hasn set the pixel selection settings Thred calculates the lower limit for pixel selection Place the mouse cursor near the edge of an object on the bitmap and hit the U key Selects all pixels brighter than the one near the mouse cursor Place the mouse cursor near the edge of an object on the bitmap and hit the N key Selects all pixels dimmer than the one near the mouse cursor Hold down the control key and hit H or select edit Trace Select Colors Shows only the brightest color in each pixel Hit H or select edit Trace Reset Form Pixels Turns all pixels under forms lines black Find edges Changes the bitmap to highlight the edges of objects Hold down the control key and hit U or select edit Trace Find edges Hide Show Hold down the Shift key and hit X select edit Trace Hide bitmap Bitmap or select file Hide Bitmap Load bitmap Select file Load Bitmap Reset Form Finds the pixels in the bitmap under a form line and turns them Pixels black Save Bitmap Saves the bitmap as it is shown on the screen This only works when you have loaded a 24 bit color bitmap Sel
44. e form clipboard fill from such a form directly However you can make a copy of the form delete the border fill and then apply this command to get the form fill Rotate There are two rotate commands you can access from menus Rotate on the main menu and this one under the Edit menu This one allows you to enter numerical values See also Rotating Command Allows you to enter the number of degrees you want to rotate a selected item Rotate Again Page Up Page Down Rotates by the previously entered angle Page up rotates in a counterclockwise direction and Page Down rotates clockwise Rotate And Duplicate Creates a new item the duplicate of that selected and rotates it by the entered angle Rotate And Duplicate Again Page Up or Down Shift Creates a new item the duplicate of that selected and rotates it by the previously entered angle Page up Shift rotates in a counterclockwise direction and Page Down Shift rotates clockwise Select To select left click on any of the following choices All Forms and stitches Colors Selects the color where the cursor is resting You may also select an entire color range by left clicking on the right hand color bar A right click on the right hand color ribbon will select an individual stitch Control A will select the entire design Form stitches All Stitches A control Form fill stitches Form border stitches For
45. e preferences and want to make the box disappear hit Q or the escape key or right click somewhere else on the screen Appliqu Color Select the box by left clicking on it then left click on the left hand color box of the desired color If you sort your design Thred will put the appliqu color first in the stitch order If you want to have an appliqu over another section of the design this may not be desirable You can move the form and or stitches in the stitch order or you can just avoid sorting a design once you have put the applique in the order you want By default the appliqu color is number 16 on the ordinal color bar If you use that color for a design segment that is not an appliqu under layer and then you sort the design you will need to use move to end if you want that segment to stitch last Border Width Set the size in millimeters for the satin angle satin appliqu buttonhole and clipboard borders The fill will be centered over the form line Left click on the current entry and a box appears to the right Type in the number you want hit return or right click anywhere on the screen For Buttonhole borders you may also set the corner length Fill Spacing Sets the distance between lines of stitching in the fill A smaller number makes denser fill larger numbers make more space between the threads in the fill Satin fill tighter than about 28 mm will make the fabric pucker Other fills may loo
46. e used to select colors When you Color top color click on one of the Ordinal Color Boxes you will see Boxes stitches first a cross in the corresponding User Color Box Any stitches you create will be in the User Color you have selected Middle User Color These boxes allow the user to define custom colors Color suggested Left clicking on one of the User Color boxes will Boxes colors chosen bring up a Windows Color Selection Dialog box The by designer colors you select will be saved with your design both Top stitches in the Pfaff PCS and Thred THR files first Right Thred Size Allow you to select the size of the thread You can Number Select see your design with the selected thread sizes by Boxes choosing Show Threads from the view menu Two columns of color boxes placed next to each other show the order of stitching and the actual color with which you intend to stitch the design The Ordinal color bar is on the left The design will stitch out in the order those colors appear Black 1 blue 2 etc Next to each of those boxes is a User color box which you can fill using the Windows Color Dialog box Left click on the box to bring that option up on screen and select define custom colors Then you may change the RGB values or drag the cursor to select custom colors To change this row back to the ordinal colors click Edit Reset colors Changing the color in the box will change the color of
47. ect file Save Bitmap Select colors Shows the primary colors of a bitmap Hold down the control key and hit H or select edit Trace Select colors Set color Sets the high limit for a color select ribbon Pixels less bright select high than this limit will be displayed limit Show traced Shows the traced edges of a bitmap based on the settings of the edges trace control panel To call this function right or left click on the stitch window while the trace bitmap is showing or select edit Trace Show traced edges If the bitmap you are working with is large YOU MAY HAVE TO ZOOM IN to see the edge bitmap UNDERLAY FOR FILLS Center Walk Center walk puts a single line of running stitches in the center of a free hand form If the form has d lines the stitches will go from the center of one d line to the center of the next To put center walk in a form select the form and then hit the F key The form data box should appear Left click on the center walk entry in the form data box to turn center walk on or off You can also use update form to turn center walk on or off for a group of forms The underlay color is the same for center walk edge walk and underlay Edge walk Edge walk puts a line of stitches near the edge of a form The distance of the stitches from the edge of the form is determined by the indent You can turn the edge walk on and off and set the indent using the form data
48. eft drag them there or create new points using W or E You can also delete points with the delete key You must have the cursor near the point to be deleted or use the Y key to select the form point in question When you want to make a part of the form have no fan or clipboard fill stitches you need to make a non stitch area by moving your mouse cursor near the point where you want the line to start then hit the D key Move the cursor to the end of the line and left click A darker line appears There can be only two of these non stitch lines in a form If you fill edit and refill but your fill isn t what you expected check to see that your D lines remain where you intended them to be If you choose regular polygon star spiral Heart or Lens you will be prompted for the number of points desired When you have entered the number of points the form is created Left click to place the form Right click near one of the form points to select the form When it is selected a box appears with eight points one on each vertex and one in the middle of each side You may move or alter the size by selecting a form point and moving it Right clicking near a form point will select it Move a corner point in to shrink the entire design Move a corner point out to grow the entire design Drag the middle form point to stretch it in length or width If you deform your design and regret it remember you have the undo button or c
49. el in a 24 bit color bitmap has a blue red and green color value Select colors takes each pixel in turn and checks to see which color is brightest Then it deletes the other two colors This can make the bitmap easier to trace Saving the bitmap This function only works when a 24 bit color bitmap is loaded It saves the bitmap just as you see it on the screen You can process the bitmap with Thred then save it to disk and load it into another graphics program Select file Save bitmap Hiding the bitmap You can easily hide the bitmap and show it again by holding down the shift key and hitting X You can also select edit Trace Hide bitmap or select the hide bmap button in trace mode Trace functions and mouse clicks Create a Form To create a form you must have done Show traced edges Left click near a traced edge and a form will be created Color Select Ribbon Set the upper limit Left click on the color select ribbon or left click on the top number below the color select ribbon Set the lower limit Right click on the color select ribbon or left click on the bottom number below the color select ribbon Maximize the upper limit and minimize the lower limit Hold down the shift key and left click on the color select ribbon Turn a color ribbon on or off Enter Trace Mode There are five ways to enter Left click on the on or off below th
50. elected The exact items in the box will vary with the type of form and the fills In general you can change any item by left clicking on the box describing that item For example if you see Border Size and a box next to it that says 3 00 left click on the 3 00 and another small box will appear Type in a new number and Thred will automatically refill the form with the new value EDIT Center These functions center forms and selected stitches Center Horizontal Minus Shift Centers a form or a group of stitches If a zoom mark is set aligns the selection horizontally with the zoom mark If not Zoom mark is set aligns the selection with the center of the stitch window Center Vertical Minus Control Centers a form or a group of stitches If a zoom mark is set aligns the selection vertically with the zoom mark If not zoom mark is set aligns the selection with the center of the stitch window Center Both Minus Centers a form or a group of stitches If a zoom mark is set centers the selection over the zoom mark If no zoom mark is set centers the selection over the center of the stitch window Center Entire Design Centers the entire design over the center of the stitch window Center Forms L Centers a stack of selected forms on the center point of the bottom form Check Range This command checks to see that all stitches are within the stitching field of the selected hoop Any outside
51. en you can left drag the mouse cursor to create a zoom window When you release the left mouse button Thred will zoom in to the window you made Shifting There are many times when you may want to see different parts of the design without zooming out In Thred you can just hold your mouse cursor over the spot you want to become the new center of zoom and hit the S key To do the same thing with scroll bars you must move your mouse to the vertical scroll bar and drag and then to the horizontal scroll bar and drag If the part of the design is out of the stitch window things in scroll bar land can be even more difficult but using the S key repeatedly you can easily move to any part of your design without ever taking your mouse out of the stitch window Thred also has scroll bars for those who prefer them Setting stitches When Thred begins running it is ready to set stitches with just a left mouse click You should see the vertical needle cursor The needle cursors are used to indicate stitch setting modes Needle Cursor Mode How to get the Cursor Type Vertical Add to Hold down a Control key and hit beginning Home Add to end Select add from the main menu bar or Hold down a Control key and hit End Rotating Insert Hold the mouse cursor near the stitch you want to interrupt and hit the space bar To move stitches instead of setting them exit the se
52. ere The length of the selected stitch will appear You may manually set stitches larger than this value You may break up large stitches into smaller ones on all or part of your design by running edit remove large stitches Stitch Length User When Thred fills this is the stitch length the program will try to maintain Stitch Length Minimum The program will insert no stitch smaller than this but the user may insert smaller stitches FILL It is necessary to select a form before you can fill it Selecting a corner and dragging it will change a form s shape Selecting the middle point on a form box lets you stretch it in one direction If you stretch a form in one direction and don t like it remember that undo will put it back If you fill a line form with a form fill Thred automatically converts it to a polygon form Form Fills Remarks Fan Can be controlled with guidelines Connects the same number of stitch lines to two form lines If you stretch one of the lines you get a fan effect Feather Like the fan fill but with many more options Vertical Fills a form with parallel vertical stitch lines Horizontal Fills a form with parallel horizontal stitch lines Angle Fills a form with parallel stitch lines at an angle you select from the preferences menu Clipboard Fills a form with data from the clipboard Textured Similar to the vertical fill except the user can control the stitch pattern
53. es which will slow down your computer Delete backups does not delete the main Thred thr file that contains your design Locking This function allows the user to set or unset the read only bit for a file When this bit is set the operating system will not allow the file to be deleted VIEW Movie I This function allows you to view the selected design as it stitches When you select Movie a slider bar appears across the top of the screen Sliding it to the left slows the stitching of the design sliding it to the right speeds it up If you select a segment of the design by double clicking on the color segment in the right hand color bar or by right clicking and holding the shift key then right clicking at the end of the desired area the movie will show only the selected portion Hit the I key as a shortcut to view the design as a movie Hit Q to quit the movie Set Set Appliqu Color The appliqu color is always stitched first to hold down the appliqu fabric It is only used for appliqu borders Color 16 is the default appliqu color To select another appliqu color first select a color by left clicking on one of the color boxes in the upper left of the Thred window Then select view Set Appliqu color You should get a message telling you that the appliqu color has been set to the color you selected Set Background Color This feature uses the Windows color selection box Select any of
54. es in the form The clipboard border code determines the spacing for the clipboard entry by dividing the distance between the nodes of the form line by the size of the select box around the clipboard entry If the line you are trying to fill is longer than the clipboard fill is wide the software determines how many it can fit in and spaces them evenly If the distance between the two nodes is not long enough to put a clipboard entry into it goes to the next node point and draws an imaginary line between the two points Then it determines if that line is long enough If itis then the program inserts a clipboard entry there For example there could be three points A B and C The line between A and B is not long enough to fit a clip between the points A and B The software then draws an imaginary line between points A and C and if this line is long enough for a clip or clips then it inserts the clip s and starts over with the next point If the line between A and C is not long enough for clips then the software tries the line between A and D and continues in this fashion until it reaches the end of the form The best clipboard border fills will be made on simple geometric forms like regular polygons or those with straight sides but you can use clipboard borders on any kind of form If you get irregular spacing you can move nodes to change spacing Sometimes you might get an equal sided figure with different numbers of clips of the sides
55. escape or right click on another area of the screen to make the drop box disappear Next to the word form the type of form is shown Left click on that to automatically cause it to flip to the other possible type If it started as Line it will become Polygon etc Once it changes to the other type of form it deletes the data that was associated with the form You may hit Undo or Control Z to undo that If you choose to change the fill you should type in the new choices then hit enter If you want to make the border of a form a different color than the interior fill you must fill it with the fill color and then go to the form data box and type in the color number of the color you want it to turn You may need to sort the stitches to get all the segments of each color to stitch in right order If you want to edit the stitching order you may also select an area and then click on Edit Move to and choose where it should be To select the target location make a Mark by selecting the target stitch and hitting the Period key or select Edit Set Order Mark from the menu When you ve made the mark then hit the semicolon key and the selected stitches will move to the marked place in the stitching order Color Ribbon To the right of the Thred Window is the Color Ribbon The color ribbon shows you a proportional picture of the stitches in the sequence they will stitch in your design starting with the first s
56. fabric to the single stitch line after the machine stops for the color change and the satin border will cover the cut edge Obviously you must choose a border size wide enough to cover and keep the fabric safely anchored Four millimeters works fairly well especially if you use a spray adhesive between the fabric layers You can carefully remove the hoop from the machine in order to trim the appliqu swatch but do not remove the fabric from the hoop A layer of water soluble stabilizer over the appliqu fabric is useful to keep the raw edges from showing between the satin stitches If you sort your design the appliqu line will sort to the beginning of the file BH This border is a mechanical approximation of the traditional handmade buttonhole stitch You can change the settings for fill spacing satin border size and BH corner length and Maximum stitch length under the Preferences menu and greatly vary the effect If you want the perpendicular stitches to be on the other side of the form pointing in rather than out line select Edit flip order Clipboard Border Creates a fill from whatever you have placed on the clipboard Preparing a clipboard fill is done most easily in an empty file It is usually best to have the beginning stitch of the fill and the ending stitch of the fill in the same location This makes a neat looking border for your fill You will usually want the beginning and ending stitch to be at the bott
57. fill and border Changes each color to the color of the majority of the stitches assigned to that form fill or border If you select stitches using the right hand color ribbon for example and change their color you can update the form using this function so that when the form is refilled the color will be the same as the stitches assigned to the form Shrink Clipboard Border Only applies to polygon forms already filled with a clipboard border The function shrinks the border so that there are no spaces between the elements of the clipboard fill This function will change the shape of the form Snap Snap functions move stitches Snap Together F2 Goes through the selected group of stitches one by one and checks if there are any stitches closer than the length set in Preferences snap to size Any such close stitches are moved to be right on top of the first stitch If nothing is selected snap together will do this for the whole file If something is selected it performs the function only on the selected stitches Snap to Grid S Shift You must select a form a group of forms or a group of stitches to use this function If you have a form or a group of forms selected Thred moves the form points to the nearest form point and then refills the form s If you have a group of stitches selected Thred moves the stitches to the nearest form point Sort Sort Auto F3 Sorts the color to correspond to their place next to the Or
58. for things like drawing the veins in a leaf Chain borders The line and open chain are very similar The line chain has a line of stitches in the middle and the open chain does not Select a form Then select fill Border Open Chain or fill Border Line Chain Then hit F or select form to get the form data box and you can change the width length or chain position If the chain position is between zero and one you will get something that looks like a chain stitch For values greater than one the effect is a little more unusual but still might be useful Unfill This will remove all fill data associated with the form Add End Control Clicking on Add allows the user to set stitches at the end of the design Use Home Control to add stitches to the beginning of the design To add stitches in the middle of the design hold your mouse cursor near the point where you want to insert a stitch and hit the space bar Frm K Minus hides your forms Plus shows your forms You may also hide your stitches by holding down the shift key and selecting frm or hitting K All Select all to see all the layers 1 2 3 4 Select a number to see what is on that layer Help Select help from the main Thred menu for Thred HTML help Keyboard Shortcuts Hotkeys Thred offers you keyboard shortcuts to minimize keystrokes and mouse movements There are several ways to call most functio
59. ghtest Pixels that are exactly like all the neighboring pixels will become black hide Hide Show Hides or shows the bitmap bmap Bitmap rst frm Reset Form Finds the pixels in the bitmap under a form line and turns pix Pixels them black sel Select Takes each pixel in turn and checks to see which color is colors Colors brightest Then it deletes the other two colors show Show Shows the traced edges of a bitmap based on the edges Traced settings of the trace control panel Edges Changing the bitmap image Thred provides the ability to change the bitmap image before using the trace functions There are three functions that can do this reset form pixels H find edges U control and select colors H control Reset form pixels finds the pixels in the bitmap under a form line and turns them black You can use this function to make sure that show traced edges has edges at forms you have already created Find edges is similar to the find edges functions in other graphics programs It makes the pixels that are most different from their neighboring pixels brightest Pixels that are exactly like all the neighboring pixels will become black To call the find edges function hold down the control key and press H select edit Trace Find edges or left click on the find edges button in trace mode Hit escape to return to the original bitmap Each pix
60. gram will figure the distance between the stitches and divide the length into segments as close to the user stitch length as feasible Remove small and large stitches is sensitive to what you have selected when you use the commands Selected Actions Nothing or multiple Affects all stitches in the design forms A range of stitches Affects only the selected range A form Affects only stitches associated with the selected form Delete Free stitches Removes stitches not part of a form such as edited segments or knots Delete All Stitches Deletes all stitches in the design and resets all forms to an unfilled state Delete Knots Deletes knots entered by the edit Set Knots function These knots are made of small stitches all in a line rather than stitches stacked on top of one another as in version of Thred before 1 025 This command will not delete the stacked knots Use edit Delete Small Stitches for that Delete All Forms Deletes all forms Delete All Forms and Stitches Deletes all forms and stitches Flip Flip Horizontal Flips selected form or range of stitches If a point of the form to be moved points left before using this function it will point right afterwards Flip Vertical Flips selected form or range of stitches If a point of the form to be moved points up before using this function it will point down afterwards Flip Order Makes a form the points of whic
61. h were entered in a clockwise order stitch counterclockwise etc This will change the location of a clipboard border from inside the form to outside etc It can also affect the filling of an angle horizontal or vertical fill In cases where there is a flaw in the fill try relocating the form zero point The form zero point also makes D lines troublesome so it may be necessary to move the zero point to get a good non stitch line in a Fan Fill Form Update Form update allows you to change parameters of several forms at once Select the forms you want to change and then hit the F key The edit menu will open with form update selected This function is designed so it can be entirely operated from the keyboard if desired For example to change the maxim fill stitch length in a number of forms follow the steps in the table below Form Update Example change maximum fill stitch length 1 Select the forms you want to change 2 Hit the F key The edit menu will open with form update selected 3 Hit the F key again The fill submenu will open 4 Hit the M key The edit menu will close and message will appear asking you for the maximum stitch length 5 Type in the maximum stitch length and hit return and the maximum stitch length will be changed in the forms you have selected and they will be refilled Of course you can also do this in the usual way with the mouse The table below list
62. half the form points in a form If you want to select more than that you need to use the arrow keys Once you have selected a group of form points you can stretch shrink move or flip horizontally and vertically You can also put a group of form points on the clipboard by selecting them and hitting Control C or Control X Once you have form points on the clipboard you can paste them into your design If you have no form point selected pasting form points will create a new form If you have a form point selected the pasted form points will be put in the new form after the selected form point Interactive Auto Trace Interactive auto trace may help you make forms from bitmaps The user can load a bitmap use auto trace to select parts of the bitmap and then create a form from the selected parts of the bitmap When using auto trace it is important to keep in mind the various bitmaps involved Originally a bitmap is located on the hard disk or CD Then you use the Load Bitmap function to load it into memory The next step is to select pixels from the loaded bitmap which are copied into a select bitmap The next step is to draw a line around the edges of the select bitmap These lines are copied into an edge bitmap and displayed on the screen When the edge bitmap is displayed you can click near one of the edges and a Thred will automatically create a form If the bitmap you are working with is large YOU MAY HAVE TO ZOOM IN t
63. he Shift right bracket key and the last form point in the form will be selected Right bracket If you have a form selected the right bracket key will also select T the last stitch owned by the form If you have a group of stitches selected the left bracket key removes the group select and leaves the last stitch in the group selected Shift the view The view is shifted When the S key is hit the mouse cursor position becomes the new center of the screen Semicolon Moves a selected group of stitches to the move mark a Equivalent to the Edit move to mark command from the menu window to get back to move mode T Enter thumbnail mode See the description in Thumbnails under the file menu T Control Enter Trace Mode You must have a bitmap loaded Space Press space to enter stitch insert mode Stitch will be inserted at the selected stitch If no stitch is selected insert will be at the stitch under the mouse cursor If there is no stitch under the mouse cursor insert mode will not be entered If you are in insert mode hit space Q or escape to get back into move mode You can also right click on an empty part of the stitch T Shift Retrace over stitches Select a group of stitches hold down the shift key and hit T Thred will stitch backwards over the stitches you have selected Rotate the current selection To enter trace mode hold the mouse curser near an object and
64. he apostrophe key The following table shows the items displayed Item Description Width The size of the design is based on all the stitches in the design It does not measure megh the size of forms Stitches The number of stitches in the design Forms The number of forms in the design Hoop Width The current size of the hoop This can be Hoop Height set from the pref menu Created by The name of the person who originally created the design Modified by The name of the last person to modify the design Retrieve Mark B Shift Sets the mark to it s last position About Thred Displays the copyright message FORM F No Form Selected You must create a form before you can fill it To create a form select form on the tool bar or hit the F key Select the type of form you want to create Choose Line Free Hand Regular Polygon Star Spiral Heart Egg Tear Zig Zag or Wave The letters to the right of the form types indicate hot keys you can also use to create forms when you have called up the form menu If you chose Line or Free Hand then you must left click to create the points of your form You need a point every place where the curve of the form changes You can insert new points with the W key or E key W sets one point E is for setting multiple points If the points aren t where you need them to be l
65. he form When you select Contour polygon forms will automatically be converted to line forms by the program The ends of the form will be disconnected so your shape is not closed anymore Textured Like the vertical fill except the user can use the texture editor to determine the patter of stitches in the fill Border Types Border Fill Description Type Line Fills your form border with a simple line of stitches Bean Makes a single line of triple stitches around the selected form Angle Satin Makes a satin border with sharp pointed corners a slightly fan like appearance and underlay stitches around your form The stitches can be at an angle to the line of the form Perpendicular This satin border uses stitches perpendicular to the form lines Satin with rounded corners and underlay stitches when the stitch length is longer than 3 mm Appliqu Similar to angle satin but with an anchoring line of single stitches used to hold down the applied fabric which are separated from the satin stitches by a color stop Clipboard Paste a small number of stitches to your clipboard and use them for a border Clipboard Same as the clipboard border fill except Thred stretches or Even shrinks the clips to make them come out even BH Creates a border that resembles a buttonhole stitch There will be a stitch along the form and one that points away from it Very close border spacing makes the stitch a
66. he layer of a selected stitch or form appears in this window Information boxes in thumbnail mode When you are viewing thumbnails the four boxes below the pick color box show the filenames of the four files in the thumbnail windows To view thumbnails of your designs open a design and hit the T key You should see four boxes showing four of the designs in that directory assuming there are four to be shown Left click on one to open it or use the up or down arrows to move through the directory of designs Stitch Editing Thred uses forms to remember most of the stitches in a design but the user may want to add stitches You may want to connect forms with lines of stitches to minimize jump stitches or to change individual stitches in the fills made using Fil Thred keeps track of stitches that are attached to forms and those that the user enters but the rules are different for stitches that you put in Thred tries to protect your stitches but there are some situations where that can t be done with a reasonable amount of effort So if you fill a form and then edit the stitches in some way don t expect to be able to keep your edit after you refill a group of forms If you refill one form Thred will remind you that you have edited stitches and you can decide if you want to go ahead Zoom and shift Zooming and shifting the viewpoint in a zoomed window are two of the most common operations in digitizing Thred make
67. ideline on the form line will cause that section of the form line to have a nonstick surface so no stitches will be placed there Two nonstick sides are the limit on one form Delete points in an unselected form by holding your mouse close to the point and hitting the delete key You may also apply a border fill to the polygon form by using the same method you use to apply a border to the line form You can area fill a polygon form with horizontal vertical or angle fills Feather Fill The feather fill like the fan fill is controlled by D lines The Convert to feather ribbon works like the Convert to satin ribbon except that the resulting form is automatically filled with the feather fill You can set the default values of the feather fill with edit Set Feather defaults There are six types of feather fill These determine how the lines of stitches are arranged in the fill Feather type Description How lines of stitches are varied Curve Smooth curve Curve2 Smooth on one side sharp points on the other side Line Straight line Ragged Random Ramp A sawtooth The lines of stitches form a straight line going from a minimum value to a maximum value and back again Picket One group of stitches is a straight line of a maximum value and the next group of stitches is a straight line of a minimum value There are four possible ways the fills will connect to the s
68. ides of the filled form Connection Description type Blend Uses stitches of two colors Stitches of the first color start at one side of the form Stitches of the other color start at the other side of the form The meet somewhere in the middle depending on the feather fill type Both Stitches are not connected to either side of the form The feather fill type controls the distance from the sides of the form Up Stitches are connected to the top of the form but not the bottom The feather fill type controls the distance of the stitches from the bottom of the form Down Stitches are connected to the bottom of the form but not the top The feather fill type controls the distance of the stitches from the top of the form The combination of the six feather fill types and the four connection types means that there are twenty four ways to arrange the feather fill To set the feather fill type and the connection type using the form data box select a form filled with feather fill then hit the F key or select form on the top menu then the form data box will come up and you can change the settings You can also use the feather floor variable to set the minimum stitch length for a feather fill The Feather up and Feather down have different effects depending on the feather fill type The maximum value is 255 Type Up Down Curve Sets the number of lines
69. ill be empty Total Shows the total number of stitches in your design For example you might see tot 5000 if your design has 5000 stitches Maximum Stitch Length If nothing is selected the maximum stitch length box shows the longest stitch in the design If you have a form or a range of stitches selected the maximum stitch box shows the longest stitch in the selected range You can show this stitch in the stitch window by right clicking on the maximum stitch box After right clicking use the left arrow to select the next smallest stitch Use the right and left arrows to select successively larger or smaller stitches Minimum stitch Length If nothing is selected the minimum stitch length box shows the shortest stitch in the design If you have a form or a range of stitches selected the minimum stitch box shows the shortest stitch in the selected range You can show this stitch in the stitch window by right clicking on the minimum stitch box After right clicking use the right arrow to select the next larger stitch Use the right and left arrows to select successively larger or smaller stitches See edit Set Knots to learn how to use this function to check your design for knots Coordinate Window The x and y coordinates of the selected stitch or form point appears in this window If you hold down the shift key and move the mouse cursor the coordinates of the mouse cursor will appear in the coordinate window Layers T
70. in the Sets the number of lines in the positive half of the curve negative half of the curve Curve2 Sets the number of lines in the Sets the number of lines in the last first half of the curve half of the curve Line No effect No effect Ragged If you set Feather up to zero the Causes the random sequence to entire form will be filled with lines go backward and select previous of random length Otherwise the values random sequence will repeat up sets the number of times Thred chooses a new value Ramp Sets the length of the up part of Sets the length of the down part of the ramp the ramp Picket Use up and down to set the length of the tall and short parts of the picket fill Vertical Fill Selecting Vertical will fill the form with lines of stitches running vertical to the form as it is viewed on the screen Horizontal Fill Selecting Horizontal fills the form with lines of stitches running horizontal to the form as it is viewed on the screen Angle Fill Selecting Angle causes the selected form to fill with stitches running at the angle set under Preferences Understanding Thred s Vertical Horizontal and Angle fills Thred uses the same method for all three fills For the horizontal and angle fills the program first rotates the form then fills them with a vertical fill and then rotates them back It makes the program much simpler and users only have to
71. in your computer If you have thrdinst exe just put it anywhere on your computer and run it You can do that by selecting Start on the windows task bar and then run Windows will prompt you for the file to run You can then either type in the location of the file or browse for it by hitting the browse button You can also run the thrdinst exe by double clicking on it in the Windows Explorer If you are using thred zip or you just have the thred exe file the following applies e Thred exe is a self contained file Thred exe and doesn t need anything else to run Put it in the directory folder of your choice Find it with Explorer right drag the icon to your desktop Then you will get a pop up menu select make short cut here and double click on the icon to start Thred e If you want to use the help file you will need to install the file Thred chm in the same directory where you have Thred exe To activate Thred exe so you can save your work you need to purchase a key from http www thredworks com The key file Thredkey bin must be in the same directory where you have installed Thred exe Search this document To search this document tap Control F and then type the word you want to find into the search field in the Windows Find and Replace box Thred User s Manual Thred s intelligent zoom and screen navigation features make your routine digitizing tasks easier than ever before and its variety of creative fi
72. ize for the snap to function here Snap to goes through the selected group of stitches one by one and checks to see if there are any stitches closer to it than the length chosen in Preferences snap to size Any such close stitches are moved to be right on top of the first stitch If nothing is selected snap together will do this for the whole file If something is selected it performs the function only on the selection Spiral Wrap Set the number of times the arm of the spiral will wrap around the center point The box for spiral points which appears when you select form spiral sets the number of points in each wrap Four points makes a squared spiral three a triangle larger numbers will make more nearly circular spirals etc Star Ratio Set the ratio between the diameter of the inner section of the star and the outer points It must be between 05 and 1 The larger the number you enter the shorter the arms of the star will be Stitch Box Cutoff Left click to set the number of times you click zoom before you see the small boxes at each stitch point A larger number here makes the boxes appear only at great magnification Stitch Length Maximum When Thred is doing a fill it won t allow stitches longer than this setting Maximum Stitch Length Set the size of the maximum stitch you want in your design To see the length of a stitch select it by right clicking on it Then look at the left hand corner of yoru screen wh
73. k sparse at that density unless they have underlay stitches made for them Fan Fill with square ends and fill spacing of 2 to 4 mm makes good underlay Button Corner Length Buttonhole Corner Length Sets the length of the stitches on the corners of forms filled with Fill oorder buttonhole A star filled this way looks like a snowflake Chain Fill Length Sets the default length of the chain border fill Chain Fill Position Sets the default position of the inside and outside corner points of the chain fill Clipboard Offset Sets the space between the columns of a vertical clipboard fill Clipboard Phase Sets the phase between the columns of a vertical clipboard fill If this value is set to two the first and second column of the fill will be offset vertically by one half the height of the clipboard fill If this value is set to three the first and second column will be offset vertically by one third the height of the clipboard fill and the first and third column will be offset vertically by two thirds the height of the clipboard fill Fill Angle This setting changes the angle of stitching lines in the angle fill Fill Ends Choose pointed or square ends where a line of Fan fill meets the edge of the form To see an example of this make a form and fill it using a fill spacing of 2 This makes the lines far enough apart to see the ends clearly Then select each option and look at the difference Square ends make a good unde
74. l be selected Inserts a mark for zooming at the mouse cursor position When this mark is visible it will be the center of zoom in or zoom out The mark can be deleted by hitting Q or escape M Control M Shift Minus Minus keypad Minus Control Minus Shift N N Control N Shift Number keys O P Page down Page down Shift Page up Page up Shift Period Q Q Shift Inserts a zoom mark at the currently selected stitch or form point Inserts a mark for zooming at the center of the stitch window Centers a selected form or group of stitches Centers on the zoom mark is there is one If not the selected item is moved to the center of the screen Toggles up to on and off Vertical Center Horizontal Center To enter trace mode hold the mouse curser near an object and hit N Show all pixels dimmer than the pixel under the mouse cursor Open the set design size dialog Move the view down one page Use the number keys at any time to select a stitch by number unless you are entering a number in a dialog box Open a file Shows the preferences data box Rotates the selected form or range of stitches in a clockwise direction by the amount set by Rotate Command from the edit menu Rotates the selected form or range of stitches in a clockwise direction by the amount set by Rotate Command from the edit menu Leaves a copy of the selected form or range of stitches in the original
75. le into your current drawing This can be very useful if you don t happen to recall exactly the name of the file you are looking for but do remember what it looked like To use this function you must first open a file in the directory of interest using the file open command Just make a guess at the file name and if you don t happen to get it on the first try then select Thumbnails from the file menu or hit the T key You will see the first four Thred files in the directory displayed Their names will be displayed in the info boxes on the lower left corner of the screen right below the pick color box You can then hit the down arrow up arrow page down or page up to view all the files in the directory You can also select all the files in the directory that begin with a certain letter or combination of letters simply by typing the letters For instance if you had some files named rose1 thr rose2 thr rose3 thr and rose4 thr but you weren t quite sure which rose you wanted to work on then you could select Thumbnails or hit T then type rose and you would see all four rose files If you didn t happen to have any other files in your directory whose names started with ro then you could select the roses by just typing ro As you type the letters to select thumbnails their names will appear under the box that usually says Box select The Box Select box is on the left of the m
76. ll give you a warning Use this function to turn off that warning Thred never gives a warning when you have more than one form selected View Backups When you select this option you will see four panels containing thumbnail sketches of the four backup files in the Thred window To load one of the backups left click on the pane showing that file Zoom Full X Left click on Zoom full to see the full screen or use the X key to do the same thing Click on In and left drag to make a box of the size you wish to view Thread Size The number set here for the thread size determines how thick the threads appear on the screen By selecting different thread size you can get some idea how the design will look sewn out in heavier or lighter thread Choose 30 40 or 60 gauge threads Left click on set defaults to cause the program to revert to the default thread widths which are 3 mm for 30 gauge 2 mm for 40 gauge 05 mm for 60 gauge Show Threads Shows you a view representing the thickness of the threads You may have to zoom in to see a difference from the normal view The show threads view is much slower to draw in most machines Hit escape to resume the normal view Show Threads for selected color Works like Show Threads but only for the currently selected color Design Information apostrophe Displays a pop up window with information about the design This function can also be accessed by t
77. lls and borders let you design and use your own fills with a few mouse clicks e Thred s rotating needle cursor keeps you up to date on the direction of stitches you re setting reducing confusion e You can easily create Thred forms and use fills and border fills for an almost infinite variety of effects e When you move a form point and change the shape of the form it is automatically refilled e In addition to line and free hand forms that you enter point by point you can automatically create regular polygons stars and spirals with any practical number of sides Set your preferences to vary the proportions of the stars and spirals no more struggling to get a perfect star spiral octagon or any regular sided figure Work on four different layers so you can easily make outlines or superimpose segments on others View your design as it stitches in slow motion movies Select a point and click on Up To to have all the stitches beyond the selection hidden This allows you to use the arrow keys to watch each segment stitch at your control See the way different thread sizes and colors change the look of the design Change the length of stitches in a finished design Refill all the forms in your Thred design to a different stitch density with one command Change the colors of your design the color of the screen background and the color of the bitmap Move rotate flip cut and paste stretch shrink or expand
78. lly selected stitch Thred will select all stitches inside the box that are connected to the original stitch Select all the stitches in the design using the A Control key combination or use select all stitches from the edit menu Select all of the stitches in any color by left clicking on the color in the color bar Selecting stitches in forms is covered in the Forms section Rotating Thred offers several ways to rotate the entire design a form or a group of stitches One set of commands just rotates the selection The other group of commands Rotate and Duplicate makes a new copy of the selected items in the rotated location Rotate and Duplicate doesn t work on the entire design You can use the Rotate command in both an interactive mode and a command mode Access Description rot from the main menu Interactive rotate Allows you to rotate a selection bar using a rotate handle Rotate Command from Command rotate Allows you to enter rotate angle the edit menu in degrees Rotate Again from the Rotates by the previously entered angle edit menu Rotate and Duplicate Creates a new item the duplicate of the one from the edit menu selected and rotates it by the entered angle Rotate and Duplicate Creates a new item the duplicate of that selected Again from the edit menu and rotates it by the previously entered angle Page up and down from Use these comman
79. long the form too short The stitch length on the sides and corners can be changed to vary the look Looks like hand appliqu stitches Picot Paste a small number of stitches to your clipboard and Thred will put them on Button Hole stitches around the border of your form The Picot border is intended to resemble the tiny knots made in lace and crochet edging Double Starts at the beginning of a border and sets line stitches to the end Then turns around and stitches back over itself Chain Sets simple chain stitches around a border Thred is a thread editor written for digitizing designs to be stitched by embroidery machines Thred saves files in PCS format DST and THR format You must also have a separate method of sending your designs to the sewing machine either software or hardware whatever is appropriate to the machine There are conversion programs that will enable users of other brands of embroidery machines to convert and use in their machines designs made in PCS format Most embroidery machines will stitch a file saved in DST format You can use Thred to create a design entirely by setting each stitch individually with your mouse or you can use the forms fills and border fills to and change large groups of stitches with a few mouse clicks Most Thred users seem to use the forms when they can and set stitches by hand when the form fills won t do exactly what they want To digitize your designs with the minimum
80. m Appliqu stitches selects only the simple line stitch under lay that anchors the appliqu Set Set design size Brings up the set design size dialog If the design already has stitches Thred loads the dialog with the size of all the stitches in the design If there are no stitches then Thred uses the size of all the forms Design size dialog controls Width Sets the width of the design Height Sets the height of the design Refill Forms If this button is activated Thred refills all the forms in the design after it changes the size Restore Aspect Used to restore the height width of the design when the dialog was opened If you want to change the size of a design but preserve its shape set the width or the height and then click on the restore aspect button Set Form Zero Point The form zero point is indicated by a larger square than the other form nodes which are small triangles The zero point is the point from which the first stitch of a border fill will begin unless there is a fill already in the form in which case the border begins at the end stitch of the fill If you choose either kind of satin border however Thred will stitch a single line to the zero point so that the border will start and end at the zero point In a satin fill the fill will start at the zero point Changing the zero point will change the way a fan fill looks In vertical or horizontal fill changing the zero point
81. nd you should run snap together before using this function Convert from Stitches to Form Converts a selected group of stitches into a line form Copy to Layer You may work on up to four layers This allows you to have identical forms with different fills or borders To copy to another layer select a form or a group of stitches Then select copy to layer and the number of the layer A form will be copied along with guidelines and non stitch lines but without fill It arrives at the new layer unfilled and ready for your next choices Crop to Form W Shift Deletes all stitch points outside of the selected form Delete Delete Select Delete Deletes whatever forms or stitches you have selected Delete Small stitches Deletes all stitches smaller than the size chosen under preferences small stitch size Use this function with care It deletes stitches below the set minimum length It is intended for use primarily with simple line segments rather than filled areas For instance in a design made in PCD you might find a section of B fill with base line that stitches too tightly to suit you Stitch length allows you to select a segment of the design and remove stitches that are too close together To alter the default settings use the Preferences menu Delete Large stitches Puts new stitches in all lines of stitching with stitches farther apart than the distance set in Preferences Maximum stitch length The pro
82. ns In addition to the toolbar across the screen you may use the following Set the form number of the currently selected form lt Set fill start Select a form point and the hit lt Shrink a form with a clipboard border so there are no spaces between the clips gt Set fill end Select a form point and the hit gt A Zoom out A Contrl Select all stitches A Shift Selects all forms and stitches Apostrophe Displays the Design Information Window B Undo B Cntrl Redo B Shift Retrieves the zoom mark C Select stitch closest to the mouse position C Cntrl Copy the selected item s to the clipboard Does not work with select all forms and stitches C Shift Convert to Satin Ribbon Comma Join two forms together Select one form and then hold your mouse cursor near a form point on the other form and type a comma The two forms will be joined together at point 0 on the first form and the point your cursor is near on second form at the moment when you hit the comma key The fill and form type information of the new form will be taken from the first form selected CommatShift Set Fill Start Select a form point then hold down the shift key and hit the comma to set the form fill start D Draw or delete a line to control fill angle in satin stitch D Shift Calls the form update menu if you have a form selected Delete If the cursor is near a color box on the left
83. o see the edge bitmap because the windows stretch bits function that Thred uses may not show all the individual bits This sounds a little complicated and maybe it is but it all happens very rapidly and should become much easier with a little practice See Also Trace Tracing monochrome bitmaps Monochrome black and white bitmaps are the easiest Just load the bitmap then hold down the control key and hit T Left click or right click on the stitch window to bring up the edge bitmap YOU MAY HAVE TO ZOOM IN to see the edge bitmap Then you can left click near one of the edges and the program will make your forms If your bitmap is a line drawing Thred will trace both sides of the line and you may have to delete some form points and change the freehand form to a line form To change a freehand form to a line form select the form hit the F key and click on the first line in the form form on the word freehand or line Thred will toggle between the two types and will change the selected form to the type written in the form data box If your trace has too few or too many points change the len or pnts values in the two info boxes at the lower left of the Thred window Too make more points set the len value smaller or the pnts value larger Tracing 24 bit color bitmaps Color bitmaps have thousands of times more possible combinations than black and white bitmaps so it is a little more complicated to t
84. of effort you should block out the main elements of your design with forms then arrange the rest the way you want by sorting and moving the stitches and hand punching in the final stitches There is an unwritten rule in graphics programs that any action on an object pointed to by a mouse cursor must be initiated by a mouse click By ignoring this rule Thred gives your mouse a set of virtual keys and lets you do a lot of different things with a virtual mouse click Usually you have to use one mouse click to change the mouse mode and then another mouse click to do something With Thred you can use a keyboard key in coordination with your mouse to do a lot of different things with one motion without worrying about modes The downside is that you have to remember these keys but there are not a lot of them and we think you will save more than enough time and confusion to make it worth your while to learn a few simple key codes MouseKey Table These keys are the ones you need to learn There are more that you might like to learn in the Hotkey table The keyboard shortcuts save time you would spend moving the mouse up to the menu and then back to the screen while you work Key Action C Select the stitch closest to the mouse cursor To deselect right click on an empty part of the screen or hit Q Use this when selecting stitches near form points or the program wants to pick the form point instead of a stitch You can
85. of the Thred screen that color will be deleted other wise delete a form a stitch a range of stitches or a point in a satin stitch form Down Arrow If a stitch is selected moves the selection to the next stitch of a different kind Down Arrow If a form is selected moves the selection to the previous form If no form is selected selects the last form Forms are numbered as they are entered Down Control Nudge Moves things down E Insert form points Hold the mouse cursor near a form point and hit the E key Left click to set form points When you are finished setting form points hit Q or escape E shift End End Cnitrl End Cntrl Shift End Shift Escape F F Shift F1 F10 F11 F11 Shift F12 F2 F3 F3 Cntrl F3 Shift F4 Forward Slash G H H Control Opens the texture editor If a stitch is selected End changes the selection to the last stitch in the selected color If a stitch is not selected End selects the last stitch in the file Allows inserting a stitch at the end of the pattern same as the add menu item Sets the end of the group select to the end of the pattern Same as End but also selects a range Deselect stitches and return to move mode Form If a form is selected shows the form data sheet if no forms are selected F shows a menu of possible forms to enter If a group of forms are selected the form update menu is activated Convert to fe
86. om or the top of the fill for a clipboard border fill and at the right or left side when you fill a whole form with clipboard fill If you want to achieve other effects you can put the beginning and ending stitch of the clipboard fill anywhere you like You may also set knots in the beginning and ending of the clipboard entry and clip the connecting jump stitches out You can achieve pleasing effects by simply entering a random pattern of stitches hitting control A to select them all and control C to enter them into the clipboard Then you need to create a form and fill it with the clipboard fill It is convenient to use forms to create the clipboard fill For example you could create a 5 pointed star fill to use to create a clipboard border Starting with a new file select form from the main menu or hit the F key Then select star You will be prompted for the number of points for your star Hit the 5 key You can then tap enter or right click somewhere on the stitch area An outline of the star will appear at the location of the mouse cursor Move the star to a convenient location and left click The star form is now entered into the Thred file Little boxes will appear on the star indicating the ends of all the lines in the star Right click on one of the small boxes to select the star A select box will be drawn around the star Select fill from the main menu Then select border and then bean Thred will fill in
87. on A side window will pop up Enter the new number and hit return spc Stitch window spacing Left click on the spc button A side window will pop up Enter the new number and hit return After you have created a fill using a certain spacing and use it to fill a form if you the change the fill spacing using the form data box the aspect ratio of the fill will be changed Border Fills Line Bean Angle Satin Perpendicular Satin Appliqu BH Clipboard Clipboard Even Picot Double Chain Line Borders These are simple straight line stitches Their length is determined by the user stitch length which you can set under Preferences Bean Borders Bean Borders are made with a triple stitch which makes a forward back forward motion sometimes used for sewing on stretch fabrics This makes a repeated stitch each time so it makes a more defined outline Bean borders are not as effective with short stitches A user stitch length of 3 mm to 4 mm is a reasonable size Simple outlines in Bean stitch make effective quilting designs Angle Satin This fill makes satin stitch following the form The difference between angle satin and perpendicular satin is in the way they handle corners Angle satin corners come to a sharp point which makes Angle Satin the better choice for filling a star However you can make a mess by making your form nodes too sharp an angle or too crowded so if you h
88. ontrol Z A form must be selected to fill unfill or refill The number you select for the heart or lens form determines the density of the form points but does not determine how many form points will be in the form A larger number will give more form points and a smaller number will give less If you make a line form and select it then select edit convert to ribbon it will become a polygon form with non stick lines already in place Fill it with Fan fill making sure to have your stitch length preferences set wider than the form and it will look like a ribbon Tear Form If you select the Tear form you will see a dialog box that allows you to set the parameters of the tear you create with the form The table below lists the controls in the dialog box and their effects on the creation of the form Tear Dialog Box Controls Cancel Closes the dialog box and doesn t create a form Default Tear Sets up the dialog box to create a default tear Default Paisley Sets up the dialog box to create a default parameter Points Sets the number of points in the form The form will actually contain one more point than this value Tear Ratio A higher value in this control will create a longer and slimmer tear or paisley Twist Setup The twist setup controls turn the tear into a paisley by twisting the tail of the tear Twist Step This is the amount the first points in the tear tail are moved to
89. r the stitch spacing which it takes from the preferences you have set This enables you to easily change density on all the fills in a design if you don t like your first choices Repair Data Attempts to repair a design that gives a Data error message when view Set Data Check is on The data repaired is form points clipboard data d line data and texture fill data We recommend running edit Refill All J after you have used this function After running refill all you can see what fills are still in what forms Refill all often introduces jump stitches so you might want to hit the B key to restore your design Previous version of Thred introduced errors into the data Many of these errors won t cause any problems except making the design a little larger than it should be but some are serious Reset colors Resets the design colors to the ordinal colors Retrace Select a range of stitches then select the retrace function and Thred will stitch back over the selected range setting the new stitches exactly on top of the old Retrieve Clipboard Stitches F4 Retrieve extracts a fill from a form and places it in the clipboard Select a form by right clicking near one of the form points Then select Retrieve Clipboard Fill from the Edit menu If a form has both a border clipboard fill and a form clipboard fill this command will retrieve the border clipboard fill There is currently no way to retrieve th
90. race them but not thousands of times more difficult by any means To trace a color bitmap put your mouse cursor near the edge of the object you want to outline the hit the U key Thred will read the pixel of the bitmap nearest the mouse cursor and show you all the pixels that have blue green and red values greater than the pixel you chose The rest of the bitmap will be black If you want to modify this choice you can move the mouse cursor and hit U again or you can use the trace control panel which will appear on the left side of the Thred screen When you have selected the bits you want you can left click or right click on the stitch window and the edge bitmap will appear then you can left click near one of the outlines and Thred will create a form You can also put your mouse cursor anywhere on the bitmap and hit the N key and Thred will select all the pixels with RGB values less that the pixel near the mouse cursor If you do this when you have already hit the U key Thred will select pixels between the two values Using the trace control panel The trace control panel appears when Thred is in trace mode and controls which pixels are selected The color select ribbons at the top show and control the colors that are selected Left click on one of these ribbons to set the top of the selected range and right click to set the bottom Hold down the shift key and click on a color select ribbon to select the entire
91. reate forms etc Then you can enter the texture editor again and your fill will still be there Retrieving texture fill data from a form You can transfer texture fills from a selected form to the texture editor by pressing the F4 key The texture editor supports 16 levels of undo You can box select stitches in the texture editor and move them or drag individual stitches Importing stitches into the texture editor Hold down the shift key then hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse cursor to create a select box enclosing the stitches you want to import The stitches will be imported into the texture editor and the texture editor window will be opened This function works best when the stitches you are trying to import are vertical The texture editor does not support zoom Texture editor functions and hot keys Minus Center form In the stitch editor select a form and paste it to the clipboard Enter the texture editor and hit V to retrieve the form from the clipboard Move the mouse until the form is in the vertical position you want Then hit the minus key Thred will center the form horizontally and set stitches from the form Left bracket When you have put a form on the clipboard and you are placing stitches in the texture editor using the form you can use the key to make the form smaller Right bracket T When you have put a form on the clipboard and you are placing sti
92. rlay for other fills Fill the form press f to get the form data box and select underlay there You can also make an underlay yourself by making two sets of fan fill lines perpendicular to each other made with preferences set so that the lines are 2 mm apart and the stitch length is 3 5 mm Square ends are usually preferred for underlay This will stabilize and plump up the fill stitches you put over it Grid Cutoff The grid represents the stitch points It gives you a visual representation of the degree of zoom Smaller grids are only useful at higher levels of magnification so the set grid cutoff function allows you to tell the program how much magnification you want before the grid appears Left click on grid cutoff and enter a number from zero to nine The current setting will be visible when the box appears The number indicates how many times you must hit Z or Zoom In to see the grid If you enter zero the grid will always be visible Grid size Sets the grid size in millimeters Hoop Type Thred offers Pfaff Large Hoop 120 X115 mm Pfaff Small Hoop 80X80 mm 100mm or Custom hoop size To set the custom hoop size enter the length and width sizes in millimeters into the Preferences Custom Hoop Width and Custom Hoop Length fields After you have the hoop the size you want select Set Custom After you have set the custom hoop size you can retrieve it any time by selec
93. rm or a free hand form Box is the default The box cursor is actually a box with a cross in the middle You can also set the cursor to a simple cross Set Grid Mask The grid is drawn using an exclusive or line so it will show up on any background color Exclusive or inverts the selected bits so that if a selected bit is one it will be changed to zero and if it is zero it will be changed to one The following settings are available Setting Description Hex Value High This grid is the easiest to see It has the most FFFFFF contrast with the background color Medium A medium contrast grid 404040 Default This is the default grid 202020 UnRed This grid will be easier to see with background colors FF2020 that have a lot or a little of red in them UnBlue This grid will be easier to see with background colors 20FF20 that have a lot or a little of blue in them UnGreen This grid will be easier to see with background colors 2020FF that have a lot or a little of green in them Set Line Border Spacing Controls the spacing for line border fill Setting Description Exact Each stitch will be the set exactly at the user stitch length from the preferences menu But the end stitch in a line segment will be used to adjust for the fact that most line segments can not be divided evenly by the user stitch length Even All stitches in a line segment will be the same size and that size
94. rotated to be horizontal Clipboard angle fill Just like the Clipboard vertical fill except rotated by the fill angle Contour Fill Contour fills create a series of lines of stitches that are parallel to a selected area of a line form If you select fan fill while a polygon form is selected Thred will convert it to a line form and put in a guideline to select the active part of the form Contour guidelines are similar to the guidelines of the fan fill except that there can be only one per form If you delete the guideline from a form filled with contour fill the fill will also be deleted If you then put in another guideline the form will be refilled If you put in a new guideline in a contour filled form the old guideline will be automatically removed Put in a new guideline by holding the mouse cursor near a form point and hitting the D key You will see a new guideline attached to your mouse cursor Hold the mouse cursor near another form point and left click to attach the other end of the guideline Texture Fill The texture fill editor allows you to control the stitch placement in vertical horizontal or angle fills You can place stitches individually using lines or with forms Select a form create a fill in the texture editor then hit one of the fill buttons in the texture editor box and the form will be filled Or you can create a fill in the texture editor go back to the stitch editor and edit stitches or c
95. rst stitch in the selected color If a stitch is not selected Home selects the first stitch in the file Same as Home but also selects a range Insert a stitch at the beginning of the pattern Sets the beginning of the group select to the beginning of the pattern Run the movie To insert a color hold the mouse cursor near the color box on the left side of the Thred screen where you want to insert the color and hit the insert key Refill all forms Move view left one screen Toggle forms on off Set Knots Set knot at selected point Hide Stitches Toggles up to on and off Centers forms over the center point of the first form selected Select forms with control and mouse click or box select Delete all stitches If a stitch is selected moves the selection to the previous stitch If a form point is selected moves the selection to the previous form point Nudge Moves things left Same as left arrow when a stitch is selected but also selects a range of stitches Moves the form point selection but does not select a range of form stitches If you have a form selected the left bracket key will also select the first stitch owned by the form If you have a group of stitches selected the left bracket key removes the group select and leaves the first stitch in the group selected If you have a form selected hold down the shift key and hit the left bracket key and the first form point in the form wil
96. rst stitch in your design Left click to set stitches End Control Hold down a Ctrl key and hit the End key You will see a line from the mouse cursor to the last stitch in your design Left click to set stitches Add Select add from the main menu This works the same as End Control You should always be able to exit the stitch mode by hitting esc escape or Q or by right clicking on an empty area of the design Selecting single stitches To select a single stitch hold your mouse cursor near the stitch you want to select and right click You will see a small arrow showing you the direction of the stitch You can use the right and left arrow keys to move to the next stitch or the previous stitch Sometimes it can be difficult to select stitches because they are close to a form point and Thred will select the form point first Then you can select the stitch by holding your mouse cursor near the point you want to select and hitting the C key Thred will then ignore the form point and select the stitch Or turn off the form by hitting frm or the K key as described above Sometimes it may be difficult to select the stitch you want because stitches are right on top of each other In this situation you can use the V key to get an idea of how many stitches are stacked Hold the mouse cursor near the stitches and hit the V key Thred will draw boxes around the four closes
97. s function is designed to eliminate jogs and jags when using clipboard border fills Select a range of stitches and select this function from Edit Set and then paste the stitches to the clipboard Because the beginning and ending stitches are at mid point on the vertical sides of the rectangle that outlines the clipboard data you will get a neat clipboard border fill Set Rotation The Rotation commands set the angle used by edit Rotate Again edit Rotate and Duplicate Again and the Page up Page down hotkey rotate functions Set Rotation Angle R Control Sets the rotation angle in degrees r Control is the hotkey for this function Set Rotation Angle from Mark R Shift Sets the rotation angle in degrees You must have a form or a group of stitches selected and the zoom mark set to use this function The function measures the angle made between the mark and the selection and computes the number of rotations needed to make a full circle without overlapping Set Rotation segments R Allows you to set the rotation angle by parts of a circle If you enter 6 here the angle will be set to 60 degrees since the 360 degrees in a circle divided by 6 gives 60 degrees Set Form Number Sets the form number All other form numbers will be adjusted so there will be no gaps in the sequence Set Form Color to Stitch Color Goes through the entire design and counts colors of the stitches assigned to each form
98. s it easy Zooming The most convenient way to zoom to an area of the design you want to magnify is to set a zoom mark by holding the mouse cursor over the desired area of the design and hitting the M key to mark it A small cross will appear Then hit the Z key to zoom in Hit the A key to zoom away You can also hit the X key to zoom all the way out to the full view of your design There are several other ways that Thred determines the center of Zoom when zooming Center of Zoom Table Condition How Thred determines the new center of zoom Zoom mark set The zoom mark becomes the new center of zoom Stitch Selected The selected stitch becomes the new center of zoom Inserting a stitch If you are inserting a stitch between two stitches already in the design the new center of zoom will be between the two stitches Group of Stitches The center of the selected group of stitches becomes the Selected new center of zoom Form Selected The center of the form becomes the new center of zoom Form Point The form point becomes the new center of zoom Selected Group of Forms The center of the group of forms becomes the new center Selected of zoom You can also make a zoom window Hit Q or Escape to make sure that nothing is selected and that there is no zoom mark Then select in from the Thred menu bar The mouse cursor will turn into a cross Th
99. s the form data you can change Form update data Maximum Stitch Length Minimum Stitch Length Stitch Length Spacing Center Walk On Off Edge Walk On Off Fill Angle Color Maximum Stitch Length Stitch Length Minimum Stitch Length Spacing Height Indent Underlay On Off Angle Color Spacing Under Stitch Length Width Move Move To Start Moves the selected portion to the start of the stitch order Move To Mark Moves the selected portion of the design to a move mark Make a mark by selecting a stitch and then selecting set mark from the edit menu or hitting the period key This will mark your spot You will see a small arrow in the stitch window pointing in the direction of the selected stitch Then go to the Edit select forms or stitches as desired and select the part to be moved Now select move to mark from the edit menu or hit the semicolon key Your selection should move to the mark and stitch in that order It is also possible to make a mark by placing your cursor over the appropriate color on the right color ribbon and right clicking Then hit end or home to put the mark at the end of beginning of that color Move To End Moves the selected portion to the end of the stitch order Move To Layer This deletes the selection from the starting layer and copies to the target Refill All J Refill all uses the information last entered for the forms except fo
100. t stitch mode by hitting the escape key the Q key or by right clicking on an empty part of the stitch window When you exit the set stitch mode the mouse cursor will change from a needle to an arrow If you have forms near the place you want to set stitches you can turn off the forms temporarily by hitting K or selecting frm on the menu Turning off the forms makes it easier to set stitches because the program selects a form point before a stitch point when it has to choose between them When you see the arrow you are in move mode You can then move stitches by holding the mouse cursor near the stitch and depressing the left mouse button While holding the left mouse button down drag the stitch by moving the mouse Release the left mouse button when you have the stitch where you want it There are four ways to get out of move mode and set more stitches Space Bar Hold the mouse cursor near the stitch where you want to insert more stitches Hit the space bar You will then see two lines going to the nearest two stitch points These lines should be different colors The exact colors you see will depend on the background color you have set One color will indicate the stitch to be set and the other will show a connection to the next stitch in the stitch order Left click to set stitches Home Control Hold down a Ctrl key and hit the Home key You will see a line from the mouse cursor to the fi
101. t stitches The box around the closest stitch will be the smallest and the box around the farthest stitch will be the largest You can move the stitches by left clicking in the boxes and dragging You may also select single stitches by right clicking on the color bar A small select indicator bar will appear on the color bar and the stitch select arrow will appear at the stitch you have selected in the stitch window With no stitch selected you can select the first stitch in your design by hitting the home key or the last stitch in your design by hitting the end key If you have a stitch selected then the home key will take you to the first stitch in that color and the end key will take you to the last stitch in that color If you have a group of stitches selected hitting the left bracket key will de select the group and select the first individual stitch in the selected group If you have a group of stitches selected hitting the right bracket key will de select the group and select the last stitch in the selected group You can use the bracket keys with the group selects to quickly find the first and last stitch of a form fill You may also select a stitch by entering a number at any time except when you are entering a number into a dialog box Selecting groups of stitches One way is to start by selecting a single stitch Then there are seven basic ways you can expand your selection to a group of stitches
102. tches in the texture editor using the form you can use the key to make the form larger A Angle fill Use the A key to fill a form with a angle textured fill or hit the angle button in the textured fill editor B control Z Undo D delete Hold the mouse cursor near the stitch you want to delete or box select stitches and hit D or the delete key E Start a texture editor line Place the mouse cursor where you want to start the line Hit the E key and the texture editor will place a line of stitches E shift Enter the texture editor You can also use fill Textured to enter the texture editor Escape Exit the texture editor H Horizontal fill Use the H key to fill a form with a horizontal textured fill or hit the horz button in the textured fill editor N Redo Q Reset texture editor functions R Vertical fill Use the R key to fill a form with a vertical textured fill or hit the vert button in the textured fill editor V Place texture editor stitches using a form In the stitch editor put a form on the clipboard by selecting the form and hitting control C or control X Changing the size and spacing of the texture editor hi Stitch window height Left click on the hi button A side window will pop up Enter the new number and hit return wid Stitch window width Left click on the wid butt
103. that half of the petal points the petal will appear to be split Inner Petal When you have the daisy hole function selected the inner petal Points points set the number of points for each petal Center Size The ratio of the center size to the pixel size determines the relative and Petal size of the petals and the center of the daisy The daisy form will Size be the same size regardless of how you set these two items Hole If you check this box Thred will put a hole in the daisy form D lines If you check this box Thred will put d lines in the daisy form Hole Size Sets the hole size If the value in this box is less than the sum of the center size and the petal size the hole will be smaller than the petals of the form Petal Type Curve Curved Petals Center Point Petals with a point in their center Side Point Petals with a point at their side Ragged A daisy form with repeating random shaped petals Cog Produces a form that looks like a gear Mirror Produces a form that can have split petals See mirror points Reset Resets the daisy form to default values Form Preferences You can use the preferences menu to control the look of the star and egg forms Change the Star ratio Spiral wrap and Egg ratio entries on the preferences menu and then create a star spiral or egg form If you have a form selected When you hit F or select form you will get a box describing the form you have s
104. the error If you could also select undo and then send us a copy of the design it would be helpful If you turn this function on and load a design from a previous version of Thred you may get an error message Many of these errors are harmless in the sense that the files only have errors in them that make them a little larger than they should be Others are serious because fill data is not there that should be To if you get this message you can run edit Repair Data Or you can set data check to Auto Repair Then if Thred finds an error in the data it will just quietly run the Repair Data function You can also use Repair Data with Message which repairs a data error any time one is found but prints a message on the screen when that is done Set Default Preferences Sets all the items on the preference menu to the their default values Set Fill at Select When Fill at Select is set to On Thred will fill a new form starting right after the stitch you have selected If you have no stitch selected or if Fill at Select is set to Off Thred will fill a new form at the end of the stitch order Set Machine File Type Thred will save a machine file in addition to the Thred file If you wish to use a Pfaff machine set the Machine file type to Pfaff PCS If you want to use DST files set the machine file type to Tajima DST Set Form Cursor The form cursor appears when you are entering a line fo
105. ting Custom from the hoop size menu To convert millimeters to inches multiply by 25 4 To convert inches to millimeters divide by 25 4 Thred will accept hoop sizes for any currently available home embroidery machines When you change the hoop size so that stitches in your design are outside the currently selected hoop size Thred will move your design back in the hoop if possible If the design is too large for that Thred will make the hoop size bigger If the design is moved you will see the message Design re centered If the hoop size has been changed Thred changes the hoop size in the preferences to the new hoop size Hoop Height Enter the height of the embroidery design you want to make in millimeters or the size of the field your machine will accept Thred will zoom out to the size you enter for your custom hoop so you will get a better view of design details if you select the minimum size needed Hoop Width Enter the width of the embroidery design you want to make in millimeters or the size of the field your machine will accept Thred will zoom out to the size you enter for your custom hoop so you will get a better view of design details if you select the minimum size needed Nudge Sets the length of the nudge Arrow keys Control Picot Spacing When you select Fill border picot this is the setting that will change the spacing of the picots See the section on clipboard fills for information about m
106. titch at the top and ending with the last stitch at the bottom Function Description Select stitch Right click on the color ribbon You will see a mark on the color ribbon and an arrow cursor over the stitch you have selected Move the stitch Home If a stitch is already selected Moves the selection selection to the beginning of the color If a stitch is not selected selects the beginning stitch in the file End If a stitch is already selected Moves the selection to the end of the color If a stitch is not selected selects the last stitch in the file Select a Range of Left click on the color ribbon to select an entire color SUENES With a stitch selected hit home shift to select a range of stitches from the selected stitch to the beginning of the color Or hit end shift to select a range of stitches from the selected stitch to the end of the color With a stitch selected hit home shift control to select a range of stitches from the selected stitch to the beginning of the design Or hit end shift control to select a range of stitches from the selected stitch to the end of the design Screen colors Thred lets you set the background color and the thread colors to any color you want We believe most users want this feature but it does have some drawbacks In order to let you see the form lines and other kinds of lines that may appear on the screen during the course of editing
107. unction requires you to use only the boxes on the far left of the screen because the left mouse click on the second column of boxes is used to define colors The insert and delete functions will work with either of the two columns of color boxes Use this function when you want to change the sort order of your design The stitch ordering won t change until you use one of the sort functions Switch Color Values To switch color values hold down the control key and drag the color you want to switch to the color you want to switch it with Use this function when you want to change the sort order and also the colors of your design Copy Colors Works just like switch colors except that copy colors makes the two colors the same Copy colors by holding down the shift key and dragging the color you want to copy Insert Color Hold your mouse cursor over a color box on the left of the Thred window Hit the insert key A color will be inserted You will get an error message if all colors are in use Delete Color Hold your mouse cursor over a color box on the left of the Thred window Hit the delete key The color under the mouse cursor will be deleted Thred will not delete a color that is being used THRED MENUS FILE New Creates a new file If the current file has not been save puts up a message Opening a file O Thred supports the Thred THR file format and two machine file formats PCS and DST When you sa
108. use cursor near the point on the second form where you want the forms to be joined and press the comma key Thred also makes full use of the left and right mouse buttons In general use the left mouse button to move something and the right mouse button to select or drop the selection By learning these commands you can save many mouse clicks while digitizing a design and minimize the confusion of remembering what mode your mouse is in Thred Window Aside from the menu bar at the top Thred divides the window into three main areas Window Area Description Color Bar and Information Boxes Located on the left of the Thred Window the three columns wide Color Bar is used to change Thred colors and sizes The information windows below it present information about various aspects of the design Some are also controls activated by a mouse click Stitch Window In the middle of the Thred Window the Stitch Window is used to edit stitches and forms Color Ribbon To the right of the Thred Window is the Color Ribbon The color ribbon shows you a proportional picture of the stitches in the sequence they will stitch in your design starting with the first stitch at the top and ending with the last stitch at the bottom Color Bar The Color Bar is made up of three vertical rows of small boxes seen at the left of the Thred Window Position Name Used For Left Ordinal Color These boxes ar
109. using the texture editor Border Fills Remarks Line Puts a simple line of stitches around a form Bean Puts a Bean or triple stitch around a form Angle Satin The Angle Satin fill makes pointed corners Perpendicular Satin The Perpendicular Satin uses vertical lines except at the form corners which are rounded Appliqu Similar to the Angle Satin except that it puts two lines of line stitches around the edge of the form under the satin border The line stitches anchor the appliqu BH Button Hole stitch border Clipboard Fills the form border with a repeating pattern of data from the Border clipboard Clipboard Same as the clipboard border fill except Thred stretches or Even shrinks the clips to make them come out even Picot Fills the form border with picots derived from clipboard data A line form only allows border fills except for the contour fill If you try to fill a line form with one of the area fills it will automatically be changed to a border fill If you try to fill a polygon form with contour fill it will automatically be changed to a line form To use the clipboard fill you must first put something in the clipboard by selecting a filled form or a group of stitches and hitting control C or control X Choose designs to become clipboard borders carefully They need to be a moderate size neither too small nor too large If you put the beginning and ending stitch of
110. ve your THR file Thred also saves you file in the machine file format To set the Auxiliary file type select Set from the view menu and then Machine file type In the top left hand corner of the screen a single left click on the word file brings a drop box offering to open a new file or open an existing file You may also get this box by hitting the O key The open file option brings a box with the look in field Choose the directory where you have saved your design or the floppy disk drive A or the Compact Disk drive if you are taking the design from a CD Note that the files of type option can be pcs dst files or thr Thred will open a Pfaff file pcs or a Tajima file dst PCD will not open a Thred file thr If you need to use PCD to load a file into your sewing machine it must first be saved as a pcs file Thred automatically creates a Thred file and a PCS file or a DST file depending on the Machine file setting on the view menu The thr file format saves your color choices forms and fills information which PCD and DST will not save Close Closes an open file If the file has been changed Thred puts up a message Thumbnails T This function allows you to search for files by looking at small thumbnail sketches of the files You must hit Escape to exit the thumbnail mode When you find the file you want left click on its thumbnail to load it or right click to insert the entire fi

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