What's New with WeaveMaker

Top New Features

Colors and Colorways

Annotation

Top New Features

WeaveMaker is tested fully functional in Leopard and Vista!

Equivalent Threadings Analysis: This is a stunning new feature of WeaveMaker, in which the threading is continuously analyzed to find all equivalent threadings. This analysis is done as the designer works and is always available in an on-screen display. Using the results of the analysis, the threading can be reworked to be simpler (if that is possible) or more regular (if that is possible) without changing the design. Thus, the designer is made aware, at all times, of alternative threadings that are equivalent to the current threading.

The Harness Merge and Equivalent Threading Analysis are features in WeaveMaker that encourage designers to experiment with innovative weave structures that quite possibly have never been used before. You can freely design, without worrying about details of the design, until you get a design you like. Then you can reduce the design to its simplest form, thus ensuring that it can be woven.

Harness Merge: This feature finds all harnesses which lift the same ends and interactively helps you combine such duplicate harnesses. In this way, you can determine the minimum number of harnesses required to weave a given design.

Browsing: Normally, you save designs by writing them to your hard drive as files. That's fine, but to retrieve a design, you have to remember its name. That isn't always easy! But with WeaveMaker there is a better way. When you want to find a design, you use the Browse feature, which shows you a thumbnail of each design file within a folder on your hard drive. Then you simply click on the design you are looking for and it opens into WeaveMaker. The thumbnails are in full color and include a list of the colors and the number of harnesses used in each design. This feature is integrated into the File Open Menu.

MouseOver Help: WeaveMaker now has "mouseover help." If you hold the mouse still over a button or design area, a small window of help text appears that explains the purpose or function of the item under the mouse. When you move or click the mouse, the help disappears. Thus, on-line help is available at all times, under your control, without using special menus or having to switch to a separate special-purpose set of Help windows. This feature can be turned off and on easily.

Expand/Shrink: The threading, peg plan, and treadling can have ends or picks added or removed at regular intervals (user selectable). This assists in adding tie-downs, for example, to a design. The added threads can be assigned a systematic coloring and weave structure, which is under the user's control.

Float Analysis: In addition to the existing float checking (thread by thread and histogram statistics), WeaveMaker now has "whole-fabric" float analysis. This assigns colors to the design based on the lengths of the floats. This instantly makes all floats visible to the designer. The designer controls the assignment of colors to float lengths, thus providing a high degree of customization to this feature. Floats detected during whole-fabric float analysis can be instantly fixed by clicking on them, without leaving the analysis mode, and the results of such edits are instantly reflected in the coloring.

Improved Printouts: The WeaveMaker palette printouts have been improved by adding several additional formats and by improvements in the existing formats.

Chip Grid: Colors within the palette are now displayed in two modes simultaneously. In the upper part of the Palette display, colors are sorted into user-selected orders, such as by hue or by name or by color group. Each time the order is changed, all the chips move in response to the user's request.

In the lower part of the display, colors are arranged in a grid by being dragged explicitly by the user. This permits the user to arrange the color chips exactly as they wish and to retain this arrangement when the palette is saved to the hard drive. Colors in the grid remain in a fixed position unless moved by the user. Because the chips don't move, the user can quickly locate the desired chip within an often-used palette (such as a palette for the current season).

Color Drag-and-Drop: WeaveMaker now supports drag-and-drop of color chips, both within the palette and between the palette and colorway windows. On the Macintosh, drag-and-drop is extended to include other applications, such as PhotoShop.

Delete Color Chips: Color chips can be deleted from within palette files.

Numeric Color Scales: Please see "Numeric color scales" in the "Colors and Colorways," section II.

Export to PhotoShop (and other graphics programs): Exports a picture of the design, complete with color chips and color arrangement bars, to PhotoShop (or any other graphics program). This makes it easy to prepare professional-quality, highly customized displays for presentation to clients or to accompany a gallery display.

Note: This feature is only available on the Macintosh.

Color Swatches on Printouts: WeaveMaker printouts that include colors now include actual color swatches. As always, the precision color matching available in WeaveMaker helps you obtain highly accurate color printouts.

Get Element: In addition to opening an entire design, you can now open just a portion of a design. For example, you can open a WeaveMaker file on your hard drive and bring just the threading into the current design. This ability to pluck out just a portion of a design extends to all parts of a design.

Dobby Drivers: The existing WeaveMaker dobby drives have been internally upgraded to improve performance, eliminate bugs, and make troubleshooting easier. WeaveMaker has dobby drivers for all AVL, Macomber, Louet, Leclerc, Schacht, and SLIPS dobbies.

Colors and Colorways

Industry Standard Sort Order: Users will be warned when their colors are not in "industry standard order" and by clicking a button colors can be sorted into this order. "Industry Standard Order" means that the first color appearing in the warp (or weft) is also the first color chip, that is, color chip "A." Similarly, the second color to appear is the second color chip, and so on.

Frequently, during designing the order of the colors is change repeatedly, as the design experiments with various colors and colorways. As a result, the order of the colors can be quite different from that desired when weaving commences (or the design is sent to the mill). By automatically warning the designer about this condition, and also correcting it with the push of a button, this feature helps ensure that warps are correctly assembled, and that the filling is done in the correct color sequence.

Automatic Colorways: A button (on the colorway window) changes the order of colors within the design, thus creating a new colorway. Each click of the button shuffles the colors into a new order. This permits the designer to rapidly experiment with the effects of varying the colorway upon the design.

Delete Color Chips: Colors within a colorway can be deleted. In prior versions, there was no way to delete a color once it was added to a colorway, even if that color wasn't in use.

Numeric Color Scales: Throughout WeaveMaker, and specifically in the colorway window, the numeric scale for Red/Green/Blue can be instantly switched among these ranges: 0-100, 0-255, 0-1000, and 0-65535. This makes it easy to transfer colors between WeaveMaker and other applications. For example, PhotoShop uses 0-255, while the standard Macintosh color wheel uses percentages (0-100). Many Macintosh applications use the 0-65535 scale. Some AVL products use the 0-1000 scale. WeaveMaker supports all these RGB scales and the user can switch among them whenever and as often as they wish.

Direct Coloring (colors can be assigned in the drawdown)

Annotation

WeaveMaker now enables you to indicate special loom setup conditions, such as Stop Motion (also known as "cramming"), double beaming, and denting. Such annotation is included in the printouts. Please see below for details.

Stop Motion (Cramming): "Stop Motion" refers to beating multiple picks into the same position within the fabric. On a power loom, this is done by operating the shuttle and beater normally but without advancing the fabric, thus the term "stop motion." Thus, the filling piles up at one position in the fabric, creating a raised ridge across the fabric.

Beaming: If you use two beams in your weaving, you can now indicate which ends are to be placed on which beam.

Denting: Denting can now be indicated both on-screen and in printouts. You can place as many ends as desired into a single dent or you can skip dents entirely. Note that WeaveMaker does not support reed knockouts.

New Pattern Generators (Schemes): The pattern generators named below have been added to the ones already found in WeaveMaker:

Threading
BasicThread
SummerWinter
Huck
Twills

Tie-Up
Summer/Winter
Huck

Treadling
BasicThread
SummerWinter
Huck
Twills
Overshot

Color Arrangements: These apply to both the warp and the weft. Alternate, Thin Stripes, Gingham, Madras, Tartan.

Scheme Settings: This is a dialog in the Special Menu. There are three mutually exclusive actions:

• Doubled Threading and/or Treadling: when checked, each thread/pick in the generated pattern is doubled up; thus 1232 becomes 11223322. This can be done with no tie-down between threads, or 20 or 4 rows of tie-down.
• Summer-Winter: in lieu of the special S-W schemes, any threadings, treadlings, and tie-ups marked with + can have S-W structure applied with this setting. Tie-down is automatically two rows. Select from four tie-up edge treatments.
• Huck: in lieu of the special Huck schemes, any threadings, treadlings, and tie-ups marked with + can have Huck structure applied with this setting. Select from four warp & weft combinations for two vs. three pattern elements in each group of five. Select from four tie-up edge treatments.
  

WeaveMaker Pro
Millennium issue

Note that all the features that have been added to the WeaveMaker base-level product are also in WeaveMaker Professional.

Pickout: Pickout was completely re-written to incorporate new features:

1. The maximum size of repeat that can be picked out is 300 ends by 300 picks (the old version limited you to 57 ends by 26 picks).
2. The automatic advance works in either the warp or weft direction.
3. The current end/pick being picked out is more clearly marked, making it easier to take a break while picking out and resume without error.

Loom Driver Files: Added support for Nissan production looms.

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