Design Formats & Conversion

What Format does my Machine use?   Before ordering or downloading a design, you need to know what type of files your machine can actually display and use.  Designs are created by a technique called digitizing. There are particular file extension names that apply to the different brands of machine.      For example the design called elephant.pes would be for a Brother, because Brother uses the file extension .pes  If you are not sure what file extension you can use, see the chart below.  Brother, Babylock, Deco Pfaff  7570 Pfaff 2100 series Pfaff creative vision Bernina Artista Bernina PE Design, Deco Wizard & Palette Husqvarna Viking Viking Designer 1 New Home, Janome, Elna Janome 10000 Elna Xquisit Singer EU, Huskygram, Poem Singer XL1000 Melco  (dos expanded) Tajima Wilcom Great Notions Pfaff Mac (7570 PC-Designer) PES, PEM, PEL, PEC PCS,PCQ (maxi), PCD(9mm) VIP, VP3, 9mm (9mm & Maxi) VP3, SPX (9mm & Maxi) ART PES, PEC PES HUS, VIP SHV SEW JEF EMD CSD XXX EXP DST EMB GNC PCM Choose the format when you order. If you are ordering an embroidery design from this site, you will need to choose your format first, from the drop down box next to the Add to Cart button. You will only see the major design formats available from that store. If your format is not shown, just choose another main format like PES, and use your conversion software (as explained below) to convert to the format you need.  Change the format you ordered your designs in.. You can log into your personal My Secrets are at Secrets, and choose a different format for your purchased designs. Then just reset your link and download again.  You will find this under the "My Products" area of your My Secrets account.  Please note only the formats available from the design store at the time of purchase, will be shown for you to choose from. Free Design Formats. Our free designs files include the most common design formats inside the one zipped file you download. If your format is not included, just use a conversion software (as explained below) to convert to the format you need.

How to Convert your Designs to a Different Format?   If you want to use a design that is not in your machine's format, you'll have to use format converting software.  That sounds a bit of a mouthful but it just means using a program like Embird to convert a design form one format to another so you can stitch it out.  There are different ways of converting desings.   Embroidery Software Programs. Sometimes your embroidery software program like PE-Design, Bernina Artista, Husqvarna etc will enable you to import designs in a different format, and convert them to the one you need to use for that software.  The choice of supported formats you can import is often limited to the most common ones like PES and HUS.  Also you will only be able to convert, or save as, the format the embroidery software uses, and the choice   Embroidery Conversion Programs There are different conversion programs available like BuzzTools and Embird which can convert to and from many different embroidery formats.    Embird is the most commonly used, and extremely popular.  New users can download a free 30 day trial, and use it to convert to and from different embroidery formats within this time frame. We have a complete range of Embird tutorials available including a free guide on converting files here.  You can see a full list of the formats Embird can support here.   Reader/Writer Boxes. Another alternative is to use a reader/writer box such as the Magic Box, Ultimate Box or Amazing Box that are available.  Basically these boxes allow you to load designs from a variety of sources (all popular brand embroidery cards, hard drive, floppy drive) and save them to a special re-writable memory card compatible in your machine format. The converted designs cannot be saved, however, and will be over-written next time you use the card.