Manual Preview
The stitch player
Watch your design sew stitch by stitch, pause at colour changes, scrub to any point and read the totals.
The stitch player is the bar under the canvas. It plays your design back the way the machine will sew it.
Controls#
- Play and Pause start and stop the playback.
- Scrub stitches is the long slider. Drag it to jump to any point. Scrub to the start and press Play to watch from the beginning.
- Speed runs from 1 times to 50 times. At 1 times the on-screen needle moves as fast as a real machine, about 850 stitches a minute.
- Auto-continue waits a moment at each colour change and then carries on. Turn it off to stop at every one.
Colour changes#
When playback reaches a colour change it stops and shows a card: "Swap to Brother 123 and the thread name". It shows a swatch of the colour. Press Continue when you are ready. That is also how you will work at the machine: change the thread, then restart.
The totals#
The line under the bar tells you:
- Stitches so far out of the total.
- The number of colour changes.
- The design size in millimetres.
- An estimated sewing time, worked out at 850 stitches a minute.
Why use it#
- Spot a long jump that would leave a thread across the design.
- See whether the sewing order makes sense. Outlines sewn before fills can be covered up.
- Check the time. Add a few minutes per colour change for the thread swap.
Playing the design ticks the Preview step in the workflow strip.