Manual Punch - Digitizing Digitizing 
- Auto Digitizing

Before digitizing for embroidery became computerized, embroidery designs were manually punched. Each individual stitch had to be created. This was done with artwork that had been enlarged (usually by a factor of 6) and was carefully planned right down to the stitch. The artwork was then attached to a digitizing tablet. The digitizer used a device called a puck (think computer mouse with a gun sight) to plot the stitch points as a set of X & Y coordinates. This information was punched into a paper tape which was then run through the machine.

If a mistake was made or an edit had to be made, a portion of the tape had to be cut out and a new piece of paper tape had to be spliced into place. It was not possible to work with groups of stitches, only individual stitches. This whole digitizing process was long and tedious. It was also very expensive.

Over the last two decades punching became computerized. Software programs were developed which allowed digitizers a new way to create and manipulate designs. Digitizers still use artwork as a guide to digitizing designs, but it is loaded into embroidery software and the stitches are created on screen.

Manual Punching and Manual Digitizing are terms often used interchangeably in the embroidery world. There are a very few digitizers who still punch embroidery designs with a tablet and puck. Manual Digitizing is very similar to manual punching. Modern software allows digitizers to work with groups of stitches instead of single stitches. This is object based digitizing versus the old stitch based digitizing. Manual digitizers most often plot points on the boundaries of a portion of the artwork creating a segment in which the software plots the stitches to fill the segment. The software may also have the ability to plot individual stitches to create special effects or just to ensure that design moves a certain way.

Once is a segment is created a digitizer must apply the appropriate characteristics including stitch length, push/pull compensation, underlay, angle, density, and color. It is this variety of characteristics in a design which transforms a design from a flat lifeless image into a work of art. It is also the reason why no two digitizers will digitize the same artwork in the same way. As digitizer must know how thread, needle, and fabric interact with the on screen design in order to ensure a quality design with proper registration.

Auto-Digitizing

Auto Digitizing is when artwork is loaded into embroidery software which then plots its best guess at where the stitches should be. The problem is that there are too many variables for a software engineer to program every possible scenario.

Auto Digitizing also requires clean artwork to work well; otherwise you will have stitches jumping all over the place as the design sews. Some auto digitizing software gives the auto digitizer tools to edit a design, but it does not give full control over a design.

Quality designs are rarely if ever auto digitized. Commercial digitizers may use the auto digitizing feature of their software to help estimate stitch counts for digitizing quotes, but we don't use the auto digitized design in production because a design that has been properly digitized will sew and look better.

As you can see from this and previous articles digitizing is both an art form and a technical skill. It is this marriage of characteristics that creates really great digitizers.