How to Save and Export Your Embroidery Designs

This guide will walk you through the essential processes of saving your work in DRAWings PRO XII. Understanding the difference between saving your editable project file and exporting a stitch-ready machine file is crucial for a smooth workflow.

Part 1: Saving Your Work: The Basics

Saving your design preserves all your work, including artwork information, colors, and stitch types, allowing you to edit it later.

Saving a New Design

When you create a new design, it is given a default name like “New Design 1”, “New Design 2”, etc. These designs are not yet saved to your computer.

1. To save your work for the first time, click the Save button on the toolbar.
2. You will be prompted to choose a storage location on your computer and enter a file name for your design.
3. Click “Save” to complete the process.

Useful Tip: Once a new design is saved, the Save icon will become disabled (greyed out). This is a visual confirmation that your latest changes have been successfully saved.

Updating an Existing (Already Saved) Design

1. After making any changes to a saved design, you will notice the Save icon becomes enabled again.
2. Simply click the Save button. This will update the existing file with your latest changes. No need to enter the name again.

Other Ways to Save

You can also save your work using these alternative methods:

• Navigate to the File menu and select Save.
• Use the keyboard shortcut: $Ctrl+S$ on Windows or $Command+S$ on macOS.

Part 2: The Importance of the Native .DRAW Format

Crucial Tip: By default, the software saves your project in its native .DRAW file format. You should always save a .DRAW version of your work.

• What it contains: The .DRAW file is your master project file. It stores all the critical information about your design, including artwork objects, color data, and stitch type information.
• Why it’s important: This is the only format that allows you to fully re-open and edit every aspect of your design later. Machine embroidery formats (like .JEF, .PES, .DST) only keep the final stitch coordinates and are not suitable for comprehensive editing.

Part 3: Creating a New Version with “Save As”

If you have an existing design and want to create a modified version without overwriting the original, use the “Save As” command.

1. Go to the File menu and select Save As.
2. You will be prompted to select a new name and/or a different location for this new version of the design.
3. The original file will remain untouched.

Part 4: Exporting for Your Embroidery Machine

When your design is complete and ready to be stitched, you must save it in a format that your specific embroidery machine can read.

1. From the File menu, select the Save As option.
2. In the “Save as type” dropdown menu, expand the list of available formats.
3. Select the appropriate file format for your embroidery machine (e.g., JEF, PES, DST, etc.).
4. Give it a name and click Save. A confirmation dialog will appear to let you know the file was exported successfully.

Part 5: A Convenient Shortcut: Exporting Directly to a USB Drive

DRAWings PRO XII has a special feature to export a design directly to a connected USB drive, simplifying the process of getting files to your machine.

1. Connect a USB storage device to your computer.
2. Click the Export to USB Storage icon on the standard toolbar.
3. From the list of drives that appears, select your USB device.
4. First-Time USB Use: If your machine requires a specific folder structure on the USB drive, the software will ask if you want to prepare the drive. Choose Yes. The necessary folders will be created automatically. This only happens the first time you use a particular USB drive with this feature.
5. Navigate to the desired folder on your USB drive. For some machines, you may be able to create, rename, or delete folders to organize your designs.
6. Provide a name for the design and select the file type.
   • Useful Tip: This list is automatically filtered to show only the file types supported by your machine, which helps prevent confusion and errors.
7. Click Export to finalize the process.

Your design is now on your USB drive and ready for production on your embroidery machine!