ok...and pet peeves.
run fill stitches at an angle. not left and right, or up and down. if you run with the direction of the nape of the fabric it can stretch the fabric and cause puckering and throw off registration.
no satin stitches under 1.3 mm wide...including lettering. less than that and its thread-break city. if lettering comes out less than 1.3 mm wide. pull comp can be used to make it wider. but don't go so wide that it fills in the e's and a's.
my general rule of thumb. if a stitch area is less than 1.3 mm wide, its a running stitch. take the time to zoom in and measure the stitch widths with the pull comp to make sure they aren't under 1.3 mm. between 1.3 mm wide and 6 mm wide, its a satin. over 6 mm wide and its a fill. (tho this rule gets broken from time-to-time depending on the situation). as the width of a satin stitch goes up....so should the density and amount of underlay.
less than a 2-2.5ish mm satin stitch only needs a single line underlay. more than that and you're jacking up the stitch count unnecessarily.
caps...digitize from the center out and from the bottom up. a cap design will stitch fine on a shirt....a shirt design will not always stitch right on a cap.
underlay is important. and so is pull comp (whether you compensate manually or automatic). not all underlay has to be generated automatically. if you have, say, a checkered flag, consider laying down an underlay in the first color, either manually, or using a fill stitch with a very light density, that covers the entire flag area first, and not just under each check. the underlay will help hold the entire area stable and help with registration.
not everything you see in a design should be digitized. you have GOT to know what works and what does not. and tell your customer up front what can't be done so they aren't disappointed and give options. text too small? can you make it work in all upper case instead of caps and lower case? can it be stacked on two lines, etc.
think about pathing. the sewing order is important, but pathing from one stitch group to the next is just as important. nothing is more irritating than a design with 15 unnecessary trims.
registration. when you outline a fill with a running stitch, end the fill stitch a bit short of the running stitch outline in the direction the stitches are running. if you digitize a running stitch perfect circle, the fill stitch should look more like an oval.
1-click, autodigitizing is terrible. don't use it. even the best software can't THINK.
give your design depth and character. can a large area of fill be done instead with several sections of satins to give it life? no? how about several sections of fill stitches running different directions? light will catch the stitch groups differently and bring it to life. (skubler...the email i sent you is a perfect example of this). it takes a lot more time, but is worth it in the end.
https://s15.postimg.org/5n169gzob/image.jpg
this design would be boring with one solid block of grey fill, and one solid block of white fill.
lettering. vertical stitching letters, like I, M, N, V, W (etc) will stitch looking taller than letters that are horizontal on top and bottom like a B, C, D, E, O (etc) unless you compensate for it. the edges of the satin stitch will sink into the fabric making the horizontal letters look shorter. if you don't compensate with pull comp, do it manually. without pull comp i generally make the BCDEO (etc.) 6-8% larger. on lettering that is horizontal on top like FPRT i enlarge vertically about 3-4% then make 'flush top' with the BCDEO letters. on letters with a horizontal bottom like JLU, i bump it up 3-4% and make "flush bottom" with the BCDEO letters.
small serif fonts. NOT two stitch groups like this:
| |
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------------
_________
do it as one stitch group...like this:
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__| |__
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if you (the embroiderer) are having consistent registration problems, thread breaks or having to send designs back for edits....you need to find a new digitizer. they will probably be more expensive, but they are worth it. the best embroiderer can't make a poorly digitized design stitch well or look good.
what did i miss? i'll probably come up with more later...its early.
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general rules of thumb for digitizing...and how to spot a bad design.
