How to add my own fonts to Hatch Embroidery?

How to add my own fonts to Hatch Embroidery?


How to add my own fonts to Hatch Embroidery?

We get asked often if you can add your own fonts to Hatch? The answer is "it depends on what type of font you have".
There are several ways to add new "fonts" to your Hatch Embroidery software.
  1. System Fonts
  2. ESA files purchased from 3rd party vendors.
  3. Hatch Font Packs
  4. Keyboard Design Collections
  5. True Type Fonts - (or Open Type Fonts)
  6. Individual letters (sometimes called fonts by the user)
System Fonts (Embroidery Fonts)
System Fonts are the Embroidery fonts that were included in your Hatch program. You do not need to back these fonts up or move them. If you accidentally duplicate one, you will not be able to use this font in Hatch. It is best to never touch any files in either C:\Program Files\Wilcom or C:\ProgramFiles (x86)\Wilcom

ESA files purchased from 3rd party vendors.
3rd party ESA file need to be placed in a folder that is hidden in Windows by default. Start by telling Windows to Show Hidden Items
How to show any hidden folder, eg the ProgramData folder

If you have Hatch 2.1 or later (including Hatch 3 and Hatch 4):

You will save the *.ESA file to this folder: C:\ProgramData\Wilcom\Hatch Embroidery\FONTS
Note this folder may be hidden on your computer. If so,click to "show hidden files".

If you have Hatch 2.1 or an earlier version

You will save the .ESA file to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Wilcom\Hatch Embroidery SoftwareV1\USERLETW

After adding the ESA file to the correct folder, Hatch will need to be restarted.
Note: Do not duplicate an ESA file in any Wilcom folder, if there is a duplicate file, the font will not be displayed

Hatch Font Packs

Hatch Font Packs

If you have purchased these directly from the Hatch website, you will not need to install them. Simply restart your software after your purchase and the fonts will appear in the font drop-down list. Each font pack has several font sets. Make sure you are looking for the font set name, not the font pack name.

These are the .ESA files that were digitized by a professional digitizer and saved to work with keyboard lettering. You can type the letter, and the professionally digitized font will appear. These are the easiest and best quality fonts.
Keyboard design collections (KDC)
KDCs are a new feature included in Hatch Embroidery 3 and Hatch Embroidery 4. Hatch Embroidery Personalizer and Composer 3 and Hatch Embroidery Personalizer and Composer 4 can utilize existing KDC. Only Hatch Embroidery Digitizer 4 and Hatch Embroidery Digitizer 3 can create them.

The KDC tool allows you to map embroidery files/objects to keyboard characters in a collection. KDCs can be used in your designs with both Lettering and Monogramming tools. In Design Library, you can map selected embroidery files to specified characters in one go or one at a time. In the design window, you can map selected embroidery objects one character at a time.

KDC that you create yourself are automatically added to this location: C:\ProgramData\Wilcom\Hatch Embroidery\FONTS

You do not need to do anything.

 

KDC files that you purchased from third party vendors will need to be saved to this location:

C:\ProgramData\Wilcom\Hatch Embroidery\FONTS
This folder may be hidden. You will need to tell Windows to show hidden files. 

Make sure they are unzipped.  Then restart your software.


KDCs are available for purchase on the Hatch website. If you purchase these KDCs from Hatch, you will need to restart Hatch to add them to your software.

For detailed information on creating KDC, please refer to the User Guide article below:


True Type Fonts - (or Open Type Fonts)
If you install TrueType or OpenType fonts in your windows system, they will show up as a TrueType Font in Hatch Embroidery. 

You can download the TrueType fonts from the internet and install in your Windows. Once installed in your system, you can use them as "keyboard lettering". You type your lettering, and Hatch will automatically add stitches to the letter and show on your screen.

To use these types of fonts, restart Hatch Embroidery. They will appear in your Font List.

Hatch Embroidery will automatically create stitches for the letters or characters you type on your screen. 

Some TrueType fonts come as a font family. This means one font file includes different styles, like bold, italic, and thin.

Hatch does not read all of the styles in a font family. If you install a font family, Hatch will only show one style.

To use bold, italic, or other styles in Hatch, you must download and install each style as a separate font file.


Some of these will work very nicely, but it depends on the actual way the original font was created. Remember, these were not originally created for "stitches". They were created to be printed in solid colors with no outlines, sections, etc. You may find some letters or symbols in the font set do not work good in stitches. If so, select a different font.
Individual letters (sometimes called fonts by the user)
These are just individual embroidery designs that look like a letter. Generally, they are saved to a machine stitch format such as PES, JEF, DST, etc. You can use these files in a couple of different ways.

Insert each letter individually into your design

Open the design you want to add fonts or open a new blank design. Use File->Insert design to import each individual "Letter" or design file. Make sure to insert the appropriate size as machine files can only be resized +/-10%.

Create a Keyboard Design Collection

See the Keyboard Design Collection section of this FAQ. Keep in mind that you will need to create separate KDCs for each size of your "font".  For example: "1inchArial.KDC", "2inchArial.KDC", etc. KDCs created from machine files can only be resized +/-10%.
What if you have your own keyboard font from previous software?
This font would have been saved in a format that only works in the software it was created for. You would not be able to use these fonts directly in Hatch.
Moving fonts or other assets to a new computer or upgrading to a higher version of Hatch
If you are updating from Hatch 1 or Hatch 2 or Hatch 3 to Hatch 4 or adding Hatch to a new computer, and want to move your custom assets to a new computer, you can find them at the locations specified from this FAQ Site

 

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