Tools

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The "Tools" menu item contains the following items.


·    "Auto-fill pattern from image"
This function allows you to design weave patterns directly from an image without manually painting the grid.  Images must be in BMP format.
This tool is intended for simple images such as company logos, names and "cartoon" style images where the colors are clearly defined with little to no shading.  In order to minimize the number of layers in the resulting weave, you must choose a color palette from which the weave will be painted. The software examines each pixel on the image and maps it to the nearest color from the palette range which you have pre-defined.

Key elements such as the diameter of the rod where the weave will be positioned, the number of threads (row count) in the weave, and the included angle that the weave will cover on the must be entered prior to importing the image.
Both the image and the column count or number of rotations in the weave will be calculated from these factors.

For best results, hold the cursor over the colors in the image you wish to have included in the weave and hit the F3 button.  This will add them to the palette, or if you uncheck the "automatically add colors" check box it will scroll to the color.
Try to include as many main colors as possible.  You can easily reduce the colors when you are finished by using the "exchange colors" function, however if you do not allow enough colors to choose from at this point, the pattern may require a great deal of manual work later.

You may also select any colors in the image which you want to exclude from the weave. This allows you to select the background of the image so that it is not filled in as a color in the weave.
To delete any colors from the exclusion list, click on the color and right click to display the delete menu.  From here you can delete either the selected color, or all colors from the excluded list.

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When complete, some "touching up" may be required on the weave depending on the complexity of the original image.  An image with a large number of colors or areas with shading or other color gradients may result in a pattern with a great many color changes.
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·      "Evaluate Image" 
This tool allows you to evaluate an image to determine the aspect ratio (height to width ratio) required for your weave to maintain proportions.  See Creating A New Project

·    "Launch Colormap Utility"
This will launch the colormap utility.
Please note that any changes or additions to colors will not take effect until you shut down and re-start PicToWeave,
see Thread Colors for more information.


·    "View weave coverage on blank"
This tool will allow you to view the portion of the rod blank that will be covered by your weave based on the rod diameter and thread sizes you have chosen.
Enter  the diameter of the rod blank you are using at the point where the weave will be situated.
Then adjust the angle either side of zero degrees that you wish to cover with your weave.
PicToWeave will calculate the approximate number of threads of the currently selected size will be required to cover that area.
This figure would then be used to determine the number of rows in your grid.
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·    "Export to Ms Excel"
This function will export your grid to a Microsoft® Excel® compatible file.
Ms Excel must be installed on the system.

·    "Import Ms Excel Sheet"
This will import the default worksheet of a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet.
The import process will perform the following modifications.
1:  All text contained in any cells in the spreadsheet will be deleted.
2:  All white cells will be cleared.  (If white is part of the pattern, change the white areas to another color before importing.  You can then swap it to white after importing using the Exchange Colors tool in PicToWeave).

Please not only the cell colors of the spreadsheet will be imported.  Do not use a spreadsheet that contains images, formulas or other special functions.

·    "Recount thread colors used"
This tool will force the number of different thread colors is in the weave pattern to be recounted. The layer count and thread color list will be updated.
It is not normally necessary to do this as the count is updated in most functions that alter the thread color count.  If you delete rows or columns and do not recount the colors at that time, the thread list and/or layer count may not be accurate until a count is done.