Open Croftweaver
Below left is what you'll see when you open
Croft Weaver. Below right is the result of
clicking on a few green crosses to bring up more line entries.
Below left. If you click on the white
box at the right of the first line, you'll bring up a simple colour
palette. Click on the colour you want and then move down to the
next white box and repeat the action. Below right
shows our choice of the first colour.
Left. We've now clicked on each of the empty
white boxes to choose our colours.
Normally you mustn't use more than six different colours. You'll
notice that in some cases we've chosen some colours more than
once.
When you look Below, at the simple design
that we've ended up with, you'll see why - we want the same colour
to appear more than once in our tartan.
The formula for a tartan design uses the number of threads of
each colour and the default number is 8 as you see from the box
above. But that results in a rather boring design where all the
bands of colours are the same width and we end up with more of a
gingham tablecloth than a tartan.
The number of threads can be increased or decreased by clicking
the up or down arrow next to the number box or by deleting what's
there and typing in a new number. As you do that, you'll see the
design change automatically (if you've got the Auto-build button
clicked). Normally you would only choose an even number of threads
and CroftWeaver is programmed to go or down in twos.
If we become a bit adventurous and start changing the
number of threads as in the illustration on the
left we get a much more interesting design as
shown on the right. The colour sequence is exactly
the same but the proportions are very different. When you get to
that stage, you could go back and change some of the colours and
see what effect that has on your design.
Most tartans have about 250
threads in their design and you can see the running total of your
design underneath the threadcount box (see left). You don't have to
have 250 threads exactly - anything between 250 and 300 is quite
OK.
If you want to delete a colour, click on the red cross. If you
want insert another colour band, click on the green plus sign
between the two colours where you want the insertion.
Looking at the horizontal menu bar at the
top of the screen (right), if you click Advanced
you'll then see the threadcount box shown below
which contains the half sett of the design. You'll notice that the
number of threads tallies with the threadcount boxes shown on the
previous page.
If you want, you can go into this linear version of the
threadcount and change the number of threads or delete/insert other
lines or bars. Insert the cursor where you want the change and type
in the new threadcount.
Colour codes. Most of the colour code letters are self
explanatory: R is Red, G is green, Y is yellow etc. Those colours
may have an L for Light or a D for Dark in front of them.
K which is for Black (if we used 'B' for black it would be
confused with Blue).
T which is for Brown or 'Tan' so it doesn't get confused with
Blue.
N which is for Grey or Neutral so that it doesn't get confused
with Green.
The last menu item that we need to give thought to is
File.
New tartan: self explanatory. If you click that
before you've saved your design, you'll see the grey window on the
right. Clicking Yes will delete your tartan, clicking No will give
you a chance to click File again and save your tartan.
Save tartan file. If saving your tartan, give it
a name and a suffix of .sett and click Save. If we've called our
tartan Games 1 then that would become Games 1.sett
Load tartan file. You'll see all the tartans
you've saved and just need to click on the one you want.
Send via email. This is the last important
function that you need to look at. If you are entering a
competition the To email box will already be
completed and you only have to complete the remaining boxes and
click Next. On the next window click Attach tartan
file box and the software will generate the graphic. Press
the Send button and that's the job done!
Don't you wish you were a kid and could do without all
these boring instructions?