Learn to Digitize with Generations
Do you want to learn to digitize? I don’t just mean push buttons in your embroidery digitizing software, I mean learn to make attractive, smooth-running, efficient designs?
If so, you’ll want to take advantage of this 8-unit comprehensive course written by master digitizer Lindee Goodall. Read more about the course.
What is Generations?
Generations is embroidery digitizing software that offers both auto-digitizing capabilities and full “manual punch” abilities. I put the latter in quotes, because while it does have a tool to insert stitches one at a time, that is not what we mean by manual punch these days.
Why Generations?
Why not another popular consumer brand? Well, why not Generations?
Certainly no program is perfect or has every possible tool at the lowest price and is the easiest to use. When I taught digitizing (1 to 3 day lecture/demo classes), the number one question was, “How do I do that in my software?” I dunno. I don’t have time to learn all the various home packages and it wasn’t my job (I didn’t get paid for that—I got paid for producing top notch designs).
To be perfectly honest, I sat in a class on Generations maybe in 2004 or so. A local dealer was hosting an event in our classroom and I was curious about auto-digitizing. I just could not imagine that a program could automatically create a design worth sewing without an experienced person controlling it.
What turned my head was the motifs. Yeah, I could make motifs in my $13K software but they “fell out” of the shape. In other words, unless you were making rectangles perfectly sized for the motif, the design was sloppy because it couldn’t make a partial motif that ended at the border. It looked like coloring outside the lines. Generations could not only put a motif in a complex shape, but you could cut holes (voids) in it and all the stitches fell perfectly on the outline.
Unfortunately, my style of digitizing—I was used to drawing shapes like a graphics program and then applying stitch effects—was a polar opposite to the way Generations worked. As I’ve found out over the intervening years, the program I used (and still use alot) works differently than nearly every other digitizing program on the market. Therefore, if I was ever going to teach a hands-on digitizing class, I’d have to change my way of thinking and working,
And My Arm was Twisted…
Over the years, my good friend and really almost business partner, Gary Walker, the managing director of Echidna Products in Australia, continually and consistently applied pressure to get me to reconsider. It was a real effort—not only on his part but on mine—to totally rethink how to work in digitizing software that was not only so extremely different but also required me to work in Windows. Then finally, one day it clicked and now I can get around in the program pretty well.
Like Riding a Bike
Well, maybe using the software is not quite like that. It’s really more like learning a foreign language. Once you learn how to speak one language, then it is just a matter of translation. I know how to create a smooth running, artistic design in one program so now I just need to find the tools in this new program.
The point is, if you complete the Learn to Digitize course series, you will know how to digitize and probably have a good idea of how to do it in any other brand of software you have.
Finally, Hands-on Digitizing Training
So now I’m taking all that digitizing theory and applying it in a practical, structured manner in a program that anyone can buy. Generations costs about the same as other consumer based digitizing programs in its range of functionality. If you currently have embroidery digitizing software that you don’t use (for any reason!), you may be able to trade it in for a significant discount towards the purchase of Generations.
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