Janice Henning
http://www.sewmuch4retirement.com
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, more files are added to the "Windows Explorer" to make those programs function. When we install our sewing programs, necessary files will automatically be added to the "Windows Explorer." When we purchase designs or download designs, we will then have to manually add some of our own files or folders in the correct places. I will explain how to do that.
First we are going to look at "Windows Explorer." To open it the fastest way, simply "right click" on "Start" and choose "Explorer". Use the scroll bar to scroll to the top. Look under the "C" drive and you will see the folders.
Our Viking Husqvarna programs have a main folder for designs, which will be either HUSQ95 or HUSQPRO (if you have the full Pro System). If you click on the "+" in front of that main folder, it will open up to reveal sub folders underneath. One of those sub folders will be HUS with a "+" in front of it. If you click on the "+" sign, that folder will open up and reveal sub folders. We will want to make folders for all types of designs in categories such as leaves, trees, flowers, animals, etc. We will want all of those categories listed under THAT "Hus" folder.
When we have designs that we want to use with our Customizing programs, we need to put those designs in one of those categories. In the "Windows Explorer" we can only see the names of the designs in those folders. Buzz Tools, however, lets us open a folder and see the actual pictures of those designs by the page full (you decide how many you want to see at a time). You will actually be opening up the "Windows Explorer" WITHIN the Buzz Tools program. Buzz Tools calls this folder of designs a "catalog." In "Windows Explorer" we call it a "folder" or a "file." Under the "C" drive in Buzz Tools, you will see the exact same folders. So, the point I am getting to here, is that Buzz Tools is acting like a camera to see designs on your hard drive or on a floppy or on a Zip disk drive or on a CD . You are always actually viewing part of the "Windows Explorer" within Buzz Tools so you can see pictures along with names. The order of folders will be exactly the same as you see in "Windows Explorer."
I am going to explain how to use Buzz Tools and the "Windows Explorer" together on the same screen so you can use Buzz Tools efficiently.
Open Buzz Tools. You will see a screen that is called "Select Files" and just below you will see a very long narrow window that says "Drives." It will have a small arrow on the right side. Look to see what it says in that window. It may say "C drive." If your designs are on your hard drive, then look for the file where they are located. If you downloaded the designs to a floppy disk, insert your floppy disk in the A drive. Click on that arrow in the narrow window at the right side to see "removable disk" and click on that so it will appear in the window instead. If it is a CD, click on that arrow and find the CD drive. Click on the "+" in front of that folder and then click on the top hollow red box to select all of the designs in that folder. (If you only click on a hollow box in front of one of the designs, that will be the only design selected to show up on the Buzz Tools picture screen.) You will see on the top right side the number of designs selected. Click on "OK" and the pictures of the designs appear. Notice at the bottom of that screen there is another window. I have it set to "all supported types".
Click on the top hollow box and all of the boxes will be highlighted and up to the right, you will see how many designs were selected. Click on "OK" and the pictures of the designs appear. (See my section on "Organizing Designs Downloaded to Disks.")
I make a folder (See Making New Folders section below) just under the "C" drive in the "Windows Explorer" called "ABC Download" (or you can name it " !Download ") that I use whenever I download designs. Naming the folder either of these ways assures that the folder will appear first in the list under the "C drive" in the "Windows Explorer." I made sure THAT folder was the one in the download window. That way, each time you download, that folder will come up automatically and all the downloaded designs will go in that folder ready to be converted, extracted and organized.
NOW WE NEED TO SET UP THE PAGE LAYOUTS FOR VIEWING AND PRINTING:
Click on "File" and look for "Page Layout." At the top of the screen, you will see a small box and click on "filename only." Use the "Tab" key on the keyboard and tab down until your cursor is on the "columns" box and change this setting to "4." Tab down to the "rows" box and change this setting to "6" and then click on "Save Settings" and click on "OK."
Go to the "View" and another menu appears. You want a dot before 75% and a dot before "Summary." Make sure there is a checkmark before "Show Hoop." No others should be checked. You will have to go to "View" several times to make these choices. It closes after each selection. This is the layout I like the best. You now have 4 columns with 6 rows of pictures and they are a nice size to view. If you want them bigger, choose 3 columns and 4 rows. You decide the # of rows and columns.
The reason I chose "Show Hoop" is so you could see the outline of the hoop around the design to see when the design is actually bigger than the 4X4 hoop square around it. This alerts you that it is a size for the Designer 1 (or other large hoop machine). I did not choose "show border" as I felt if wasn't necessary.
Once you make these settings and the ones I will tell you about below, they stay that way. The only ones you need to click on each time will be "delete original files" when converting or extracting.
EXTRACTING AND CONVERTING (extracting means unzipping):
Click on "Tools" and click on "Extract Files" and click on "Entire Catalog." A dot appears in front of it. Click on "Delete Original Files" and click on "Extracted Fle Only" and click on "Next" and "Finish."
Now we will "convert" those designs to our format. Click on "Tools" and click on "Convert" and when the screen appears, click on the down arrow in the small window and click on "HUS" (or whatever your program is) and make it appear in that little window. Once you choose this, it will stay there.
Click on "Entire Catalog" and click on "Delete Original" and the next screen appears. Click on "No" for splitting designs and click on "Converted Files Only" and "Next". On the next screen, click on "Try To Rotate".
If you own the Designer One, click on "Convert If Still Too Big For The Hoop." Click on "Finish." You will also see a "Hoop" setting that you can change from the 100X100 or 150 X 240. I choose the smaller one because when I convert and unzip a design, the box around the design will let me know immediately if it is a design too big for the normal hoop. If the box is in the middle of the hoop with part of the design hanging over, then you know the design is for the larger hoops. That's all I care to know.
SOME SITES PUT LOTS OF FORMATS INTO THEIR ZIPPED DESIGN FILES. ONCE YOU CONVERT, YOU WILL SEE 4 OR 5 OF THE SAME DESIGN BECAUSE IT CONVERTED ALL THE DIFFERENT FORMATS TO HUS. THE DESIGN MAY BE CALLED "SUGAR" AND THEN YOU WILL SEE "SUGAR-1" AND THEN "SUGAR-2, SUGAR-3," ETC. JUST DELETE THOSE EXTRA ONES IMMEDIATELY by clicking on the design and then hit your "Delete" key. You could do this through the "Explorer" by holding down the "Control key" and clicking on each one and then go to "File," "Delete" to remove all at once.
PRINTING OUT THE DESIGNS:
When you open Buzz Tools and choose the folder of designs, click on the "+" in front of that folder of designs, then click on the hollow box in front of the folder. This will select all the designs in the folder. Then click on "File" and "Print Summary."
If you want to print out another folder of designs immediately following, then you must click on "File" and "New Catalog" to select a different folder. (Personally, I feel printing pages of designs is a waste of time and ink and paper because the files change so rapidly when adding designs.)
DOWNLOADING DESIGNS:
Open the "Internet Explorer." At the top you will see a narrow window that says "Address". You need to type in the web address of the site, such as http://www.annthegran.com.
When this site comes up, look for "free designs" or something relating to free designs. When the designs appear on the screen, click on the one you want and a screen appears that will show a file in the narrow window. I click on that down arrow and search for my "ABC Download" or "!Download" folder that I put directly under my C Drive. Double click on it so it appears in that window. Once you put that folder in the window, it will stay there forever unless you change it. Click on "Save" and it will download to that folder.
Find another design and click on it and that same window appears and this time Download folder is already there, so just click on "Save." Save as many as you like. You can download from other sites the same way. (Depending on how the website is coded, sometimes you may have to right click and choose "Save Target As" in order to download a design.)
Now, you have them downloaded, you need to then open Buzz Tools and find that folder and convert and extract as I directed above.
HOW TO ORGANIZE THE FILES USING EXPLORER AND BUZZ TOOLS:
See page 60 in Buzz Tools manual for a picture of this.
Changing Buzz Tools and the "Windows Explorer" screen sizes: Open Buzz Tools and then shrink it up to 2/3rds of the screen by placing your cursor on the top edge or on the bottom edge of the screen to make it higher. When you place your cursor on the edges of the program screen, it forms a double arrow and if you hold down the left mouse button, you can drag the screen to make it taller or wider depending on where you grab the screen. Make it as tall as you can but still leave some of the computer screen showing on the top and bottom.
Now, place your cursor on the top blue bar of the program and hold down the left button and drag the whole screen to the left side of your computer screen but leave a tiny bit of space showing on the left side. Open the "Windows Explorer" (right click on "Start" and choose "Explore"). Use your cursor on the tops and bottoms to make this screen tall and narrow like you did the Buzz Tools screen. Then place the cursor on the top blue bar and hold down the left mouse button and drag this program screen to the right side of the computer screen. If it is still too wide to fit there, make it a bit narrower. You can place your cursor on that middle dividing line in the explorer and move that to the right or left too.
We only NEED to see the left side of the explorer and 1 column of the right side of the explorer. When you have only 1 column on the right showing, you will also have a scroll bar at the bottom to move back and forth to reveal the other columns, so don't worry if you can't see the entire window contents all at once after you have resized the window. Everything is still accessible via the scrollbars.
Now, you have two programs open at the same time. Every time you open these two programs, they will now be this size and open on the sides of the computer screen where you placed them. If you would ever want to see a bigger screen of each program, just touch the middle square at the upper right side of the program and it will maximize the screen to the fullest. But, make sure you click on it again to minimize it for future use.
MAKING FOLDERS FOR OUR DESIGNS:
You will want to have the "Windows Explorer" open to make lots of subfolders under "HUS" to store your designs. All folders are listed in alphabetical order automatically and if you make subfolders, they also will be in alphabetical order. This is called the "Explorer Tree."
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 instead of having them on my hard drive as E Card 1, E Card 9 or disk # 538 or accessing the designs from the floppies. You could never remember what is on each disk.
To make these folders, remember that we want them to appear under the "HUS" that is under "Husq95" (or if you have the Pro, under Husq Pro). So, always click on the "Hus" folder to highlight it, then go up to "File, New, Folder." When "New Folder" appears on the right side of the screen, it is highlighted, you simply type the name of the folder you want to create right on top of those words.
But what if you made a folder called "Animals" and then realized you would like to have subfolders under "Animals" such as "Bears, Bunnies, Dogs, Cats, etc.?" Instead of clicking on "Hus", you would click on the "Animal" folder and go to "File, New, Folder" and type "Dog" or "Bunnies," etc. Then a "+" would appear in front of the "Animal" folder to show there are subfolders under that folder.
My "holiday" folder would have subfolders under it called Xmas, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Misc."
ORGANIZING:
On the Buzz Tools screen, find the folder of designs you want to organize. Make sure you click on the "+" sign and then click on the hollow box in front of the design folder to select ALL of the designs in that folder. Click on OK. You will now see pictures of the designs along with the names of the designs.
On the "Windows Explorer" screen, find that very same folder. Once you click on that folder on the right side of the screen, you will see everything in that folder by names of the designs and in exactly the same order as the pictures you see in Buzz Tools.
So, by seeing pictures with names in the Buzz Tools program and seeing only names in the "Windows Explorer," you can easily tell what the design is and where you actually want to place the design. If you see a flower picture called "Daisy" and in "Windows Explorer" you see a design named "Daisy", you simply click and hold the left mouse button and drag that design into the correct "Flower Designs" folder. Once you transfer several designs into the proper folders, it is a good idea to "refresh" the folder in Buzz Tools. Go to "File" and click on "Refresh Catalog". Buzz Tools will now look at that folder in the "Windows Explorer" once again to see how it looks now that some designs have been removed and put in other folders.
ORGANIZING MISC. DESIGNS THAT WERE DOWNLOADED TO DISKS:
Remember when I had you make a folder under the "C" drive called "ABC Download?" We used this exclusively for downloading designs, converting and unzipping and organizing from that folder into the proper folders. But, many times I have purchased designs that had miscellaneous designs on a disk. Or, you may have previously downloaded designs on disks to save them, but there all kinds of designs mixed together. I made a folder under HUS that I called "ABC Organize" or "!Organize'" I use this folder to place designs into it that are already converted and unzipped but simply need to be organized. (Using the "!" in front of a folder assures that it will be the top folder.) Open the "Windows Explorer," click on the "+" in front of Husq95 or Husqpro and then click on the "+" in front of HUS to see all the folders. Click on "HUS" and then go up to "File" and click on "New" and click on "New Folder" and type "ABC Organize." Starting it with ABC made it land right at the top under "HUS" so you easily use it.
Now, put the disk in the computer and click on "3 1/2 floppy A" to read the disk. When the names of the designs show up on the right side of the "Windows Explorer," hold down the "Control" key and the "A" key, then release and notice that all those designs are highlighted. Left click and hold the mouse button on the top design name and drag those designs to that "ABC Organize" folder. The original will remain on the floppy disk, and copies will be moved to the "ABC Organize" folder.
Open Buzz Tools and click on the "+" in front of Husq95 and then the "+" in front of Hus and find that "ABC Organize" folder so Buzz can see those designs. Click on the "+" in front of it, then click on the hollow red box in front of that folder to choose to view all of those designs in that folder.
In the "Windows Explorer", click on the same folder to see the names of the designs. Then, by looking at the pictures, simply decide what folder you need to transfer those designs to. It would be easier after you transfer some designs to "Refresh" your catalog in the Buzz Tools program so you can see only the designs that are left in that folder. (Click on "File" and then "Refresh Catalog.") When all the designs are transferred, your ABC Organize folder will be empty. (If you had tried to transfer directly from the disk, you would have had a terrible time trying to remember what was transferred because the designs ARE NOT REMOVED from the disk like they are from a folder on the hard drive.)
--Janice Henning
http://www.sewmuch4retirement.com