Embroidermodder

Embroidermodder is a free machine embroidery software program which allows editing, scaling, and translating sewing machine embroidery files to a variety of formats. It allows the user to add custom modifications to their embroidery designs.

The user interface has been written from scratch using C++. It harnesses the powerful Qt framework to achieve platform independence. The 3 major desktop operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux) will be targeted.

In addition to the desktop, it already works with the Raspberry Pi and we have a working demo of our code running on an Arduino. This will pave the way for low cost open source embroidery machines. We would also like to collaborate with the creators of the Smoothieboard so anyone who has one of those boards could also benefit from our work.

Very few other embroidery applications are cross-platform, with most only able to natively run on Windows. Our interface is very consistent across all platforms we support so there is no need to re-learn the interface when using it on a different operating system.

The interface itself is a CAD/CAM software but tailored for embroidery. This is intentional since both CAD and embroidery use vector formats and the embroidery machines are really just specialized CNC equipment (I.E. 3D Printers, CNC Laser Cutters, CNC Routers, CNC Lathes). So if you are interested in or familiar with CAD/CAM, then it will be possible to use it in that fashion also.

The interface is very similar to existing CAD applications so existing CAD users should be able to start using it immediately with little or no learning curve. It also incorporates additional features which are typically present in less precise graphics applications, such as the auto-adjusting ruler and an easily accessible undo history.