Carl,

That's a new one on me.

What are the supposed differences between CorelDraw and CorelDrawings?

Other than four more letters. :-)

Drawings is a very good digitizing program, but it has a few limitations. It does not have a lettering component. Most embroidery softwares can do simple keyboard lettering, just like engraving software. It is also tough to resequence your digitized designs.

A digitized design need to sew components in a certain order so it looks correct. A full digitizing software gives you better tools to sequence and manipulate stitches. Digitizing is more complex than simple printing.

That being said, Drawings is an outstanding program for many shops. You should be able to digitize 80% to 90% of the designs that come across your desk. I know a few people that are proficient with CorelDraw that use it for 100% of their digitizing. But the shops that I am speaking about have lettering software for embroidering text.

Drawings is developed by Wings Modular Embroidery software. Search them on the Internet and contact them for demonstration. They should be able to sell you the product along with a lettering component for text.

Good Luck

You can bring text into Corel and digitize it in Drawings. But an embroidery shop needs to put text on a garment as quickly as an engraving shop needs to put text on a plate. With lettering software, I can embroider 10 items in the time that you could digitize text for one with Drawings. Imagine having to vectorize text every time that you need to do a simple monogram.

As far a sequencing, embroidery jobs do not just print left to right. Sometimes you need to start in the center and embroider out to the edges of a design. Also think about those stickers from vacation destinations. They are black text on top of a white oval. If the Drawings program were to digitize the black first, it would be difficult to fix that without editing capabilities. Plus you need to be able to do a complete oval then put the text on the top.

I believe that Drawings would be a fine program for your friend. His Melco software can handle his lettering needs. I will contact you tomorrow with a person that uses the program on a regular basis.

Check with your colleague that owns the Tajimas. They make a program called DrawFusion that is the same as Drawings. That may be a more appropriate solution.

Carl,

I have DRAWings Professional vers. 2.2, I bought it through Digital Art Solutions (Smart Designs) - If you sweet talk them, they will throw in some additional software and updates in the package. The few times I have needed tech help, they have either been available immediately or call back in a few hours. Good Peoples! They will be in Vegas and hopefully will be demonstrating DRAWings - it's fun to watch them do MAGIC right in front of your eyes.

hth,