Embroidermodder 2.0.0-alpha
( IN ALPHA DEVELOPMENT: NOT READY FOR SERIOUS USE. )
Embroidermodder is a free machine embroidery software program. The newest version, Embroidermodder 2 can:
- edit and create embroidery designs
- estimate the amount of thread and machine time needed to stitch a design
- convert embroidery files to a variety of formats
- upscale or downscale designs
- run on Windows, Mac and Linux
For more in-depth information, see our website.
To try out the software in alpha see our current alpha pre-release.
Various sample embroidery design files can be found in the embroidermodder2/samples folder.
Screenshots
If you use multiple operating systems, it's important to choose software that works on all of them.
Embroidermodder 2 runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Let's not forget the Raspberry Pi.
Realistic Rendering
(This feature is currently broken.)
It is important to be able to visualize what a design will look like when stitched and our pseudo ``3D'' realistic rendering helps achieve this.
Realistic rendering sample #1:
Realistic rendering sample #2:
Realistic rendering sample #3:
Various grid types and auto-adjusting rulers
Making use of the automatically adjusting ruler in conjunction with the grid will ensure your design is properly sized and fits within your embroidery hoop area.
Use rectangular, circular or isometric grids to construct your masterpiece!
Multiple grids and rulers in action:
Many measurement tools
Taking measurements is a critical part of creating great designs. Whether you are designing mission critical embroidered space suits for NASA or some other far out design for your next meet-up, you will have precise measurement tools at your command to make it happen. You can locate individual points or find distances between any 2 points anywhere in the design!
Take quick and accurate measurements:
Add text to any design
Need to make company apparel for all of your employees with individual names on them? No sweat. Just simply add text to your existing design or create one from scratch, quickly and easily. Didn't get it the right size or made a typo? No problem. Just select the text and update it with the property editor.
Add text and adjust its properties quickly:
Supports many formats
Embroidery machines all accept different formats. There are so many formats available that it can sometimes be confusing whether a design will work with your machine.
Embroidermodder 2 supports a wide variety of embroidery formats as well as several vector formats, such as SVG and DXF. This allows you to worry less about which designs you can use.
Batch Conversion
(Currently this being ported to the embroider command line program.)
Need to send a client several different formats? Just use libembroidery-convert, our command line utility which supports batch file conversion.
There are a multitude of formats to choose from:
Scripting API
The GUI works by emitting internal text commands, so if you want to alter or add features to the program that aren't as low level as these commands then you can chain them together in simple scripts. This allows more control over the program than the GUI can offer.
A (no longer current) Embroidermodder 2 command excerpt:
Building
To build Embroidermodder 2 from source you will need at least:
- Embroidermodder 2
- Qt (version >= 6.0).
You will also need the git submodules, which can be collected by running these lines from the embroidermodder source directory:
git submodule init
git submodule update
Optionally, you may want to add:
Ubuntu repository packages: The Qt, KDE and Valgrind build dependencies can be installed easily by opening a terminal and issuing this command:
sudo apt-get install git build-essential qt4-dev-tools libqt4-opengl-dev kdelibs5-dev valgrind
Fedora repository packages: The Qt, KDE and Valgrind build dependencies can be installed easily by opening a terminal and issuing this command:
sudo yum install git gdb gcc-c++ qt-devel kdelibs-devel valgrind
CMake
The more capable build is the CMake one, which is what we use to make the installers as well.
To use it read the output of the helper script like this:
bash build.sh --help
If you don't have bash, the following commands should build the software:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .
mv embroidermodder* ../embroidermodder2
or you can use the qmake build, or load the cmake build in Visual Studio Code.
QMake
Various methods of building can be found in the project-files subfolder. For most builds, it is as simple as opening a terminal in the embroidermodder2 subfolder and typing:
qmake && make
Build time can be considerably decreased on multi-core machines, for example:
- Dual Core:
qmake && make -j2
- Quad Core:
qmake && make -j4
When building for Fedora:
Substitute qmake-qt4 for qmake.
When building the thumbnailer do the same but in the appropriate subfolder. Libembroidery is now maintained as a repository unto itself.
When building for Windows: If you are using Qt/Mingw, substitute mingw32-make for make. If you are using Qt/MSVC, substitute nmake for make. You may need to add the directory where those executables are located to your system path. It is recommended that when targeting Windows, that you should omit the -j switch completely, otherwise build errors may occur unless you are building an individual pro file.
Install/Uninstall
To install, build one of the installers.
On Windows, install WIX and then run cpack with
./build.sh --package
Then double click the .msi file in the build/build subdirectory.
On Debian, the same command will build the .deb package which you can then
install using the aptitude package manager like this:
./build.sh --package
dpkg -i build/build/embroidermodder*.deb
to uninstall you can remove it using the name of the package.
