Need to Register?

guest3300 · February 17th, 2008

What is the difference between DecoStudio e1 and Drawings 4? DecoStudio is $1999 and Drawings is $1799. Is there that big of a difference between the 2?

imeccentric · February 17th, 2008

Fred,
Decostudio is for those of us who do both printing and embroidery. You do both the drawing composition and the embroidery on one screen instead of two different programs. It is my understanding that Corel no longer supports Drawings and has signed with wilcom for this new program. The online seminar I took showed where you could take part of a printing design and it would autodigitize that part. There still was limited manual digitizing, but not as much as Drawings Pro has. Since I prefer to punch manually, and they stressed that it was NOT a replacement for a good digitizing program, I wasn't that impressed. That said, I'm sure it will be a huge hit since not everyone wants to digitize manually.

Jim
Embellishments in Thread

guest3300 · February 17th, 2008

Jim, When you say "There still was limited manual digitizing, but not as much as Drawings Pro has" do you mean that Drawings has less capability or that Deco does?

Right now I use Wings Text and the Converter for our simplest designs but I want to get more into digitizing. I am having a very hard time just getting good information about what program and level of program to use. It seems no-one wants to sell digitizing software. Whenever I ask a vendor about it, They pretty much run away.

calijimmy · February 17th, 2008

-i've been thinking about buying wilcom 21d for the last couple of months. right now i'm using compucom. whats holding me back is the fact that decostudio is coming out. now learning more about it, it seems like its just another version of DraWings that has been around for a couple yrs now. i think wilcom seems to have the best rep among the softwares for digitizing.
-who have you talked to fred?

guest3300 · February 17th, 2008

We talked with Wilcom and they were the most responsive. The software at that time went from $5K to $30K. They tried to discourage us from starting out at the top of the line. One thing they could never tell us is how much the software would be to upgrade.

SWF Mesa couldn't give us a price or an explanation to upgrade Wings Text. They also tried to discourage us from moving to the top.

The Prodigi rep we very good and gave us 2 price options, $1500 for the software and $1000/year subscription or $5000 for the software and upgrades would be extra.

That is pretty much it. The Corel site, The Embird site, and others that we have tried to figure out what is what were of no help. Jim has helped give me some clues as to what direct to go in. Thanks Jim!

It just seems to me that these digitizing software companies don't have their act together. It is very frustrating to deal with a company that doesn't really seem interested in doing business.

guest3300 · February 17th, 2008

So I download the embird evaluation version and my anti virus software reports it as a virus. hmmm... email sent to support.

imeccentric · February 17th, 2008

Probably because it is an executable file. It just depends on which anti-virus you are running.

Jim
Embellishments in Thread

digifacmp · February 17th, 2008

Hi!
I strongly advise you to hop into any trade show and try various softwares there. They will have represenatative to answer you any question. This way you will the chance to compare all the softwares in one single day. Will save you time and money in the long term.

Kennethbeynor · February 18th, 2008

I am not sure if anyone can answer this question; Deco Studio is not available yet. I have seen the video presentation and it looks like an entry level auto-digitizing software. I am looking to evaluate it as soon as the real stuff is available.
The fact is that I have upgraded to DRAWings 4 professional and it is an astonishing piece of technology. I can still use it and run it together with CorelDRAW for printing and embroidery; I am not following those who say that Corel does not back up DRAWings... Means what??? I am personally happy having to option NOT to pay for CorelDRAW again and again :-)
I back up my company with DRAWings 4 and I can even manually digitize/vectorize, I can practically do everything fast and accurately on a professional level/quality.
This is where I got the info in the first place: DRAWstitch Technology and DRAWings embroidery software

Again as soon as Deco is available, a comparison will be easy.
In any case it would be stupid NOT to upgrade Corel DRAWings 3 to 4 at 299.

Be smart,
Ken

guest3300 · February 18th, 2008

Thanks for the info all.

I did look at the software at the trade show. See my post above where I talk about who told me what.

Right now I have Wings Text and the Corel/Wings Converter. For me it looks like Drawings 4 is $1799. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't jumping off a cliff. For that kind of money I don't want to buy an incremental improvement on my current software.

As for upgrading Wings Text, I haven't found anyone who can tell me what I need or HOW MUCH IT WILL BE!

I am pretty familiar with Wings Text working with it for a year now so I have no problem with that.

Where I do have a problem is the EmBird site with stuff like this: "There are no refunds on personalized, registered software and/or plug-ins."

Anyway, Thanks again and let me know if you have any more to add. I am checking out the EmBird forums now.

This one is too funny though, from the Embird site: "Known issues:
McAfee Antivirus software might quarantine parts of Embird. Until this problem is solved, we recommend to use different antivirus software, e.g. NOD32."

I sent them an email because NOD32 recognizes their software as a virus also.

vctradingcubao · February 18th, 2008

I don't have the top-of-the-line digitizing level either, but, Maybe you can solve the problem by just getting that one. Everybody wants to use the best tool available for efficiency and "fun" at work. The only problem is that the top-of-the-line is too pricey. Now, whether that price is justified for the user is the big question.

p.s. I read somewhere that you can even create your own embroidery fonts when you use the top-of-the-line level. Isn't it cool?

BETO · February 23rd, 2008

Well i preorder the decostudio software and the lady in wilcom company her name is selena she said is gona be out in the end of february but theyy dont got like free classes or trainning suppor yet like tthe others softwares like wilcom es but she said they will have soon. i bought the software because i tired pay people to digitize me customers designers , because when i bought me machine the person that sale it to me, said i will need just tha basic lettering software because i dint even know what what's exactly digitazing.

guest3300 · February 24th, 2008

Well after all this we decided to upgrade our Experience Wings Text Plus to Operator. The price was right and we get a free training class with it. For most of what we do this will hold up fine. For our most complicated designs, we will still send those out.

sandollar · February 27th, 2008

It is Febuary 27 and Wilcom just called and told me my Decostudio will be on my door step on the 28. Looking forward to giving my two cents worth. Will be in touch once I get to play with it.