Analyze your design
Run Analysis before you export a dense or heavily edited design, to find out whether it will sew cleanly on your fabric. It shows where thread piles up (a stiff patch, thread breaks), where the needle perforates the fabric, and where a fill leaves gaps, then points you at the objects to fix. You get a verdict, heat maps drawn over the stitches, and a ranked list of what to look at.
It is a Pro feature. See Plans and credits.
The experimental Analyze panel was switched off in v1.2.2 and removed. Analysis, added in v1.2.6, replaces it.
Run it
Click Analysis in the header. It opens as a window with the maps inside it, rather than painting over your design, so your canvas is left alone.
Opening the window always measures the design as it is right now. After you fix something, close the window and click Analysis again to see the new result.
The report needs stitches to measure: with an empty design it says "Nothing to analyze yet. Add some stitches first."
You digitized a 70 mm logo with a tatami fill and a satin border, to sew on a cotton jersey T-shirt.
- Click Analysis, and set Fabric to Delicate (knit, jersey, silk).
- Read the verdict. Say it is Worth a look before sewing.
- Open To look at. Suppose an Objects row says the fill's row spacing is tight. Click it: the fill is selected in your design.
- Close the window, raise the fill's Row spacing a little in the Properties panel, and click Analysis again.
The verdict
At the top, one of three answers:
| Verdict | What it means |
|---|---|
| Within professional practice | Less than a tenth of the design is over the warn line and under 1% is critical. |
| Worth a look before sewing | A tenth or more is over the warn line, or 1% or more is critical, or a tenth of the filled interior is under the coverage floor. |
| Outside professional practice | 2% or more of the design is over the critical line for this fabric. |
Fabric changes the answer
The limits depend on the fabric, so the same design can pass on one and fail on another. Pick yours at the top of the window, and the report updates at once:
- Standard: medium woven, poly-cotton.
- Stable: twill, canvas, denim.
- Delicate: knit, jersey, silk.
- Non-woven: leather, vinyl, coated.
Only Standard is calibrated against professional designs; the others are scaled from it. The heat maps saturate at whichever fabric's critical line you chose. For example, a dense fill that passes on denim (Stable) can be flagged on a T-shirt knit (Delicate), which tolerates less thread before it puckers.
There is also Measure the exported stream. Turn it on to measure the stitches the way the machine will receive them, after long stitches are split for your export format. Off measures the pattern exactly as drawn.
The maps
Heat maps are drawn over a picture of the stitched design. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, double-click to fit.
- Stitches: the stitches the analysis measured.
- Coverage: how many layers of thread sit on each patch. Grey is one full layer; blue is thinner, red thicker, saturating at the critical line. A fill with underlay sits around two layers and stays near neutral. As of v1.3.2 each thread is measured at its own weight: a 12 wt fill reads more layers than the same fill in 40 wt, a 60 wt fewer. A color with no weight set counts as 40 wt, so older designs read as before.
- Penetrations: needle drops per mm², light to dark.
- Verdict: green ok, amber warn, red critical, blue a gap inside a fill.
If the maps can't be drawn on your device, the numbers are still measured.
To look at
The To look at tab is the ranked list of things worth fixing, worst first. Click a row to frame it in the map and select the object in your design.
It has two groups:
Regions are patches of fabric over a limit. A patch is listed when one object lays that much thread by itself, which usually means its spacing is too tight.
A fill, its underlay and a satin border stack thread on the same fabric by design, so every professional piece has patches over the line where they meet. Three ordinary objects overlapping already reach four layers. Those are counted beside the map instead of listed as faults. If a stack does bother you, the remedy is trimming the fill underneath, not re-digitizing anything.
Objects are checked from each object's own shape and settings. This is where a single over-tight or over-narrow object shows up, even when the design as a whole passes:
- A satin column too narrow: both rails land in nearly the same line of fabric. Very narrow, and the needle perforates one line; widen it or stitch it as a running stitch.
- A satin column too wide: stitches this long float loose and snag in wear. Split it, or use a tatami fill.
- Row spacing or satin spacing too tight (thread breaks, a stiff patch) or too loose (the fabric shows through).
- An object outside the hoop: it will not stitch, and the needle can strike the frame.
- An object that generates no stitches at all: too small for its own spacing, or its outline is degenerate.
- An object sewn entirely under a later fill: that is underlying stitching, thread and needle holes the finished piece never shows.
Numbers and threads
The Numbers tab carries the measurements behind the verdict: stitch count, stitched area, coverage (mean, 95th percentile, max layers), penetrations per mm², the share over the warn and critical lines, the share under the coverage floor, repeat holes, stitch length, long stitches, very short stitches, and how many stitches your export format will split.
Some of these are ordinary in small amounts and the panel says so: ties and satin corners deliberately make very short stitches and reopen holes, so a modest share is normal rather than a defect.
The Threads tab breaks penetrations and thread length down per color, and shows each thread's Weight ("40 wt, 0.40 mm").
The object checks also warn when an inner satin shape is more than 10 mm across, where its stitches are split shorter and a tatami fill usually looks better (new in v1.3.2).
Fixed in v1.3.0: a pixel sprite stitches several threads out of one object, and the color figures used to count it as one. They now count each of its threads, so the count here matches the color stops your machine will actually make. The same fix corrects the color count on a design's card in the community gallery.
When to run it
Before exporting, especially for designs that pack in a lot of detail: imported embroidery files, Photostitch results, dense pixel art, or anything you have scaled or edited heavily.
Free-standing lace and other open work reads as a gap by design. The analysis cannot know a hole is intentional.