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The canvas

The canvas is where you draw. It shows your design, the hoop outline (the area your machine can stitch), and optional rulers and a grid. Read this page to move around it quickly, see your design at its real size, and line things up. For the tool rail, the essentials bar, and the panels around it, see The workspace.

My design5×7 hoopmm
04812
048
Stitch
Hoop · 130×180 mm
0,0
100%Fit1,284 stitches
Schematic of the editor canvas: rulers in millimetres, the grid, the green hoop outline, the origin crosshair at its center, and a design. The render-mode chip sits over the canvas at the top right; zoom and the stitch count sit on the bottom bar. Drawn with web tech to stand in for a screenshot; not the app's GPU renderer.

Units​

Boldbobbin measures in millimetres (mm): real-world size. The Properties panel shows positions and sizes in mm (for example "Width (mm)"). You can display imperial units instead; see Settings → Unit system ("Metric (mm)" or "Imperial (in)").

For on-screen sizes to match real millimetres at 1:1 zoom, calibrate your display once. See Calibrate your display. For example, once calibrated, press Ctrl/Cmd+1 and hold a ruler against the screen: a 50 mm wide name measures 50 mm, so you can judge how it will look on a shirt before you sew it.

Pan and zoom​

  • Zoom: hold Ctrl or Cmd and scroll, or pinch on a trackpad. Zoom centers on the pointer.
  • Pan: two-finger scroll on a trackpad, the Pan tool (H), or hold Space to pan with any tool. Panning doesn't cancel what you are in the middle of (new in v1.3.3): a pen, satin, or freehand line you are drawing stays drawn, and a shape you are editing stays in edit mode. Pan to where you need to go, then carry on, or finish with Enter or the ✓ as usual.
  • Zoom presets (View menu, or shortcuts): Zoom to fit (Ctrl/Cmd+0), 1:1 actual size (Ctrl/Cmd+1), 3× (Ctrl/Cmd+3), 6× (Ctrl/Cmd+6), and Zoom to hoop, which fits the whole hoop (no key by default). The zoom controls sit on the bottom bar, under the canvas, and include a field you can type an exact percentage into. See Keyboard shortcuts.
  • Zoom to selection (Shift+2, the View menu, or the magnifier in the floating action bar): fits what you have selected to the view. Hidden objects are skipped, and a folder counts as its contents. New in v1.3.1.
  • Center on hoop: next to the zoom controls, a button recenters the view on the hoop without changing zoom. (A different, per-object Center on hoop also exists in the floating action bar: that one moves a selected object, not the view.)

Clicking the canvas takes the keyboard back​

After you type in a text field outside the canvas (a field in Properties or on the essentials bar, or the message box of the Chat panel), a click on the canvas gives the keyboard back to your design. So Ctrl/Cmd+A, for example, selects the design's objects rather than the text you just typed. New in v1.4.0.

The hoop​

The hoop is drawn in the middle of the canvas, at its real size: a Brother "5x7" hoop, for example, shows as a 130 × 180 mm area. Choose the hoop that matches your machine so the stitching area is correct: see Hoops and machines. If a design is bigger than the hoop, Boldbobbin warns you but still lets you work; see Design larger than the hoop.

While stitches are generating​

When a batch of shapes needs stitching out at once (importing an SVG, running Auto-Trace, opening a design, or changing the fill on a multi-selection), a Stitching shapes card appears over the top of the canvas with a progress bar and a count of shapes, like 37 / 90 · 41%. It only shows up for big batches, so quick edits never flash it. You can keep working while it runs.

Grid and snapping​

Toggle the grid with Toggle grid (Shift+G).

Snapping aligns objects you draw or drag to the grid, the hoop, and other objects, showing guide lines and × markers at what you lined up with.

Snapping is off until you turn it on. Turn it on with Shift+Y or in Settings → Parameters.

Why it's off by default

It used to be on, and the grid pulled almost every point you placed onto a grid line, so you could hardly put a point between two lines. Grid snapping now only catches points that are already near a line, at any zoom, so it behaves like a magnet and leaves the space between lines free. Object and hoop snapping are unchanged.

Hold Ctrl or Cmd during a drag or draw gesture to flip snapping for that one action. In Settings → Parameters, choose which targets snapping aligns to (grid, hoop, other objects, each independently) and whether to show alignment guides at all.

For example, to draw a row of squares the same size, turn on the grid (Shift+G) and snapping (Shift+Y), then start and end each square on grid lines.

The temporary alignment guides that snapping flashes while you drag are separate from the persistent guide overlays you draw with the Ruler.

The canvas HUD​

The top-right corner of the canvas carries the render-mode switch and the three stitch overlays:

  • Vector / Stitch / Realistic (Shift+S cycles): the three ways of looking at the design. Always shown.
  • Jumps (Shift+J): show jump stitches, the needle's travel moves between shapes. Stitch mode only.
  • Trims (Shift+T): mark thread-trim points, where the machine cuts the connecting thread. Stitch mode only.
  • Points (Shift+P): ring every point the needle comes down. Stitch mode only.
Reproduction of the canvas HUD, using the app's real icons. The render-mode switch sits on top; the three stitch overlays sit beneath it and appear in Stitch mode only.

See Render modes. Snapping and Guides used to have toggles here too; both were removed in v1.2.2.