I've been working closely with a few graphic designers and we are coming to the end of a project. The client wants to get some embroidery done on some shirts. So we get quotes from the various embroidery places and the client is ok with everything so we send the job off; so far so good right? Wrong. We get a call from the embroidery place asking us for a .dst format. The designer who took this call asked me after this information was provided "What a .dst was?" as he was not familiar with it. I looked at him and asked what an embroidery place wants with an autocad sheet file, as that was the extension I was aware of for that program. After a lengthy discussion and a few hours of research we discovered that it is also an embroidery format for their software. Since we didn't have any embroidery software we told them we couldn't provide then with the format. Then they told us it would be $100 to convert the file for the embroidery. Now the order was a very small order and a $100.00 to the client was a huge deal so we didn't do the order and here is why.After some extensive research there is no free software to convert the files. There are a lot of viewers and trail versions but none save to an embroidery format. The closest one that did is a Mac program called graphic converter which can save as a Mac Weavlet file but that proved to be useless. I also found a program on the Mac called Convert It by Macemb which says it will convert jpgs, tiffs all sorts of different embroidery formats to different embroidery formats. So I downloaded the trial and you can't save to an embroidery format unless you buy the software which is $150.00 so not bad but not in the budget.
My issue is not with the different software out their for embroidery but the lack of compatible standards with the rest of the graphic industry. These embroidery formats need to be opened up and made compatible with everything else. Much like with Print and Web (the difference being of course is resolution). Open standards with the rest of the industry would make software work better and converting files easier faster and cheaper. - imagine that!
This was my first experience dealing with embroidery shops and it left a nasty taste in my mouth, If I can avoid closed and proprietary systems I try to but I also realize that systems like Windows and the Mac OS are also closed systems and operate similar to the embroidery software shops only not as stringent. You need to have a cheap free way to convert to and from these file types. Thus far I know of none, but if I come across any I will share that information. I don't want anyone else to go though the experience I went though.
http://filext.com/file-extension/dst
Trevor
