Tips & Techniques

Organizing Designs with Embird’s Iconizer

The computer has a file system called "Windows Explorer" that is much like the Yellow Pages of the phone book. With the phone book, you have categories like Auto Dealer, Restaurants, Physicians, etc. Under each of those categories, you will see listings or sub categories.

The "Windows Explorer" shows you all the files that are in your computer. These files contain everything that makes your computer work. We call this listing of files the "Explorer Tree."

When we purchase new programs and install them, more files are added to the "Windows Explorer" to make those programs function.

When we purchase designs or download designs, we will have to manually add some of our own files or folders in the correct places.

First we are going to look at "Windows Explorer." To open it an easy way, simply "right click" on "Start" and choose "Explorer". Use the scroll bar to scroll to the top or use the Up arrow. Look under the "C" drive and you will see the folders. They are in alphabetical order.

Instead of keeping our designs in folders within our sewing program folders, I find it much better to have them in a folder under the C Drive so they can be found easier and if we ever update the program, we don’t have to worry about moving or losing our files. They will still be in the same place.

Click on the “C Drive”. Click on “file, new folder” and those words will be highlighted.

Type “!My Designs”. Notice that I typed in an exclamation mark before the name. This assures me that it will land at the top just under the C drive. Touch the “enter key” to set the name.

When we have designs that we want to use with our sewing programs, we need to put those designs in categories. In the "Windows Explorer" we can only see the names of the designs in those folders. But, if you have the Embird Iconizer, it will add pictures in front of those file names so you can easily SEE what the design is.

MAKING FOLDERS FOR OUR DESIGNS:All folders are listed in alphabetical order automatically and if you make subfolders, they also will be in alphabetical order.

I make folders for my designs called "Trees, Leaves, Children, Flowers, Butterflies, Transportation, Alphabets, Holidays," etc. I organize all of my designs into these folders.

As you get more designs, you will be making more folders as you need them.

Let’s do a few sub folders so you understand. Click on the “!My Designs” folder to highlight it. Click on “file, new folder” and then type in “Trees” and touch the enter key to set it. (don’t type “ ” these, just type the word)

You will see the word “Trees” now appears under the “!My Designs” folder.

Click on the “!My Designs” folder again and click on “file, new folder” an then type “Leaves” and touch the “enter key” to set the name.

Click on “!My Designs” and click on “file, new folder” and type “Flowers” and touch the enter key.

Now, you see under the “!My Designs” folder, you have trees and leaves and flowers folders.

But, let’s say you made one for “animals” and then you realized you had a lot of bears and bunnies and dogs and cats. I would want sub folders under the animal category. So, you have to click on the “animal folder” this time so the sub folders will appear under THAT folder. Click on “file, new folder” and type in Bears and touch the “enter key” to set the folder name. Now, you see that you have an sub folder under the “animal folder”.

When I made my “holiday” folder, I made sub categories under THAT folder for “Christmas” and “Easter” and “Hall/Thanks” and one called “ Misc”.

But, let’s say that you purchased a set of designs on E Card 11 which is Martha Pullen‘s. I generally just make a folder called “Martha Pullen” and then make sub categories under that folder called “E Card 9”, E Card 11, E Card 24”. Let’s do some organizing. You’ve downloaded some designs to a folder and you unzipped them. (Look at my website under “tips, other tips, #20 for downloading and unzipping information)

Open the “explorer” and click on the “+” in front of the “!My Designs” folder so it will open up to reveal the subfolders. Click on each “+” in front of the sub folders so those open up too.

Then click on the folder you downloaded the designs to. On the right side of the screen, you will see all the designs in that folder. Left click on the first one and click on “edit, move to folder”. A window will pop up and you need to click on the “+” in front of the !My Designs folder to open in and then click on the folder you want the design to go into and click on “Move”. It will move the design out of the original folder and into the new folder.

If you are good with the “left click and hold and dragging and dropping, then do that.

That means you “left click on the design and hold the button down and drag the design across the division line of the explorer and into the folder where you want it to be. As soon as that folder lights up, then you can release the mouse button.

Once you’ve moved them all, the download folder will be empty.