This tutorial will walk you through the steps for creating a new Keyboard font from a True Type Style font

Start a Text Design
From the Font Drop Down list, Select New TT Font.

This starts the TTF (True Type Font) creation wizard.

---

The first step of the Wizard is to pick your font. This first window will display the True Type and Open type fonts currently installed on your PC.

Click on the font you want to use and click OK.

This will open the second window

The next step  of the Wizard is to choose how you want your font created.

The Font you selected in step 1 will be displayed in the top window. Choose Column or Freeform as the default recipe. If Column is selected, choose whether or not to use the Hyper Font Break line editor

The majority of the fonts will be created as Column. This can always be overridden later by selecting Normal Fill as the Fill Recipe in the Text interface

Choose your options click OK. 

The text will appear on the screen in the new font and the font will be added to your font list

---

It is not necessary to create all characters for a specific font. If you do not choose this option, the system will create only the characters you have typed in the text box. If you later use this same font again and have different characters typed in the text box, the system will dynamically create the new characters for you. On modern PC's this extra time to create the new characters in barely noticeable.

If you do choose this option it will create every character in the TTF. This feature was originally developed to speed up the process of generating the letters from the Text Mode. However, this can take a long time and will make for a very large font pack.

---

The Break Line Editor is used to pre-determine the direction of stitch travel in blocks that overlap.

If the Break Line Editor was selected in the previous step, the individual letters of  the font would appear in an edit window one by one. The segments of the segments of the letters are shown as divided yellow lines.

In the example at the right of the letter "t" shows the system will break the sections into 3 pieces with the vertical leg being one and the horizontal leg divided into 2 pieces 

This gives the illusion that the vertical leg is on top of the horizontal leg.

But suppose you want the vertical bar to be broken instead with the horizontal bar sewing in one piece.

This is where the break line editor can be used most effectively

Click and drag the corners of the lines to determine which segment will be broken and where the break is to occur.

Whole lines can be moved by dragging the center node on the line.

Lines can be added or deleted as you see fit, but remember, the purpose of the Break Line editor is to determine the break in overlapping areas, it is not a substitute for digitizing and has very little effect on segments that do not overlap.

Created with the Personal Edition of HelpNDoc: Full featured multi-format Help generator