My wife has a Bernina embroidery machine and I'd like to experiment with creating designs programmatically. I'd like to either find out how to output data in a format the machine's software will accept, or else find a free or inexpensive utility that can convert from a format I can produce (such as HPGL, or something else documented) to a format the machine can accept. My intention would be to output a file with one XY coordinate per stitch, plus instructions to change thread (pause for thread change); I don't need something to generate area fills, adjust stitch spacing, optimize stitching order, etc.; I'd expect to handle those things myself.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Answer
You could look at the open source Embroidermodder 2 and it's underlying library, libembroidery. At the time of writing, it doesn't support .ART, but .DST is a common format that most machines support which may work for you. Also, you could use libembroidery's .CSV format to lay out your stitches fairly easily so that all the format specifics are abstracted away and then convert the file with libembroidery-convert to an embroidery format that your machine supports. The .CSV format has the capability of specifying color changes, jump stitches and trimming.
