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Edit a font

Auto-digitizing gets a font most of the way there. Use the font editor when a letter sews badly (a stroke that bunches, a join that gaps, a tail that should be two columns) and you want it fixed every time you type that letter. You redraw it with the same tools you use on a design, then save the font.

Open the Lettering library​

Click Lettering in the tool rail's Lettering group. The library has three groups, each showing every font set in its own typeface:

  • My fonts: fonts you've made. Each card says where it came from, and whether it's saved to the cloud.
  • Imported fonts: fonts you've brought in that have no stitch design yet.
  • Copy an included font: makes your own editable copy of one of the six bundled faces. The original is left alone.

Click any card to open it in the editor. You can also rename or delete your own fonts here. Deleting a font that came from an import removes the imported font too, but designs you already made keep their stitches.

The editor is free to use

Opening, editing, saving and stitching with your own fonts costs nothing. Boldbobbin shows a one-time-per-visit note saying so, and naming the three things that do need Pro: exporting the .bbf, keeping fonts in the cloud, and exporting a design that uses your font. Click Continue to carry on.

The editor​

The editor takes over the whole window. Down the left is a strip of every letter in the font; the middle is a real Boldbobbin canvas; the right holds the familiar Layers and Properties panels.

Because it's the real canvas, the tools work the way you already know them: Select, Pan, Cutter, Pen, Freehand, Satin column, Rectangle, Ellipse, and Add shape. The selection bar gives you delete, duplicate, Edit shape, ordering, Symmetry, reverse direction, the boolean operations, and auto entry/exit. Your own keyboard shortcuts apply.

Two things are specific to letterforms:

  • Layer order is stitching order, exactly as in a design.
  • Symmetry flips around the selection's own box, not the letter's cell. So mirroring one stroke leaves it where you drew it; select the whole letter to mirror the letter.

Overlays​

  • Letter outline (on by default): the shape the original font draws, sitting under your work as a reference. It never becomes stitches.
  • Letter box (off by default): the letter's cell. The uprights are where the letter starts and where the next one begins, and the horizontal is the baseline. Ink past the right-hand upright will collide with the next letter.

Redrawing a letter from scratch​

Auto-digitize… rebuilds the current letter from the font's outline, replacing whatever you've done to it. Choose Running, Satin, or Tatami. Revert glyph is the gentler option: it puts the letter back to how it was when you opened the font.

Editing satin columns​

Double-click a shape (or use Edit shape) to edit its nodes. On a satin column the two rails are paired: adding or removing a point on one rail does the same on the other, so the column stays valid. The Cutter divides a column into two, which is the fix when one stroke was digitized as a single column but should have been two.

Example: split the tail of a "g"

Your imported font sews the lowercase g with its bowl and tail as one bent column that bunches at the turn.

  1. Open the font from Lettering and pick g in the letter strip.
  2. Check the footer says "Editing Satin only."
  3. Select the column, take the Cutter, and drag a line across it where the tail turns.
  4. Press Ctrl/Cmd+S. From now on, a "g" you type in this font at a satin size sews as two columns.

Size ranges​

A font carries a separate drawing of every letter for each size range, and you're only editing one range at a time. The footer says which: "Editing Satin only." Use the Range dropdown in the header to switch.

Ranges… opens the range manager, where each range has a row:

  • Rename a range by typing in its name field.
  • From and To set the sizes it covers. Leave an end blank (Any) to leave it open.
  • + (Add a range starting from this digitization) adds a copy, named like "Satin (copy)", that you can give its own sizes and tune separately: for example, a version of Satin redrawn for larger letters.
  • The trash button deletes a range and its digitization, as long as one remains.

Ranges don't have to line up end to end: they may overlap, leave gaps, or cover every size. Where two overlap, the narrower one is recommended. That is what lets a style good at any size (like Contour) sit beside sized ones.

Opening the range manager just to look leaves your working size alone. It only changes when you move a boundary past the size you are working at.

The Size dropdown sets the size you're working at. It changes what you see and how the stitches read, not the font itself. Satin that looks right at 30 mm can be a solid mat at 8 mm, so check a letter at the sizes you'll actually sew. Picking a range sets the working size comfortably inside it; Custom… takes any other size.

Saving​

  • Save (or Ctrl/Cmd+S) writes the font to this computer, and to your account if your plan includes cloud fonts.
  • Done returns to the library without saving to disk, so save first if you want to keep your work.
  • Export .bbf… writes the whole font out as a file you can back up or move to another machine. This one needs Pro.

Undo and redo work per letter, as normal. Switching the working size or auto-digitizing a letter starts that letter's history over.

Changing the theme while you are editing a letter no longer discards the edit.

The essentials bar in the glyph editor​

The glyph editor carries the same essentials bar as the main canvas, so lettering and design work the same way.