• Icon can be in repeat.
• Icon can show number of actually used colors.
• Program will show automatic icon preview of all image types and jacquard weave/card files.
• If image is drawn with different density in x and y direction, the icon will still be correct.
• Images can be sorted by name, type, image size, file size, type, number of used colors.
• You can even display all images in all subdirectories within current directory.
• And did we mention that it is FAST, and that it won’t crash if you browse a directory with 80000 images?
• It has all the tools you need for drawing
• Enables motif placement and repeat (seamless) constructions
• Can automatically detect a repeat in a scanned image, or recognize a scanned weave of any grid size
• Weave recognition from grid image
• Preview of the pattern in repeat
• Automatic drawing of seamless patterns across border
• Special functions for working with contours – adding, removing, thinning, thickening, pruning

• Special functions for textile extra warp/weft or fil coupe design – count colors vertically or horizontally
• Horizontal or vertical ikat effect
• Special filters for fast pattern design
• Vertical color histogram helps to evaluate relative color percentage according to the picture
• Automatic or user controlled color reduction
• Threshold controlled color reduction from gray-scale to black & white with interactive preview
• Supports transparent and protected (masked) colors
• Works with large images up to 30.000 x 30.000 pixels (can be more in one dimension)
• Inserted text respects warp/weft density
• Ruler in centimeters/inches or pixels
• Shows uneven color distribution
• Supports layers
• Supports graphical formats in loading: PNG, GIF, PBM/PGM, PCX, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, vector formats such as PDF, PS, ESP, SVG, all jacquard formats, Arahne weave and fabric formats
• Unlimited undo/redo

General guidelines

For comfortable work, bigger screen and high resolution graphics is recommended. Nowadays the HD resolution (1920×1080) is quite affordable, and will give you enough space to express your ideas.

If your hard drive is based on SSD technology, program will work considerably faster. Software needs about 100 MB for installation, and you may need an extra 50 GB for your data. The rest will be used for the operating system and other programs.

If your CPU is multicore, they will all be used. So the more you have, the better it will work. Nowadays 4 core processors are relatively inexpensive, chose 4 cores instead of 2 cores, if you can.

High resolution Epson ink jet printer is recommended. Photo line of printers with 6 inks will give you better printout than 4 color printers. You can also use laser printers, cost per page is usually lower than ink jet, but so is the print quality.

A three button wheel mouse will allow you easy access to all program’s functions.

If you need floppy to transfer the designs into production, you need an external USB floppy drive.

You may also choose to replace the floppy on your jacquard controller with floppy emulator, and use USB pen drive to transfer your designs.

If your looms are in network, you can send designs directly from CAD to the loom using TCP/IP network.

If you need to share your work with several designers, and like having backup in cloud, we recommend storing all your CAD data in Dropbox.

You need a Mac OSX or PC computer

On Mac, it is easy; ArahWave will run on any Mac, as long as it is based on Intel processor.

This is easy to check, if your Mac dates from 2006 or later, then it is probably Intel based.

ArahWeave uses XQuartz in order to work.

On a PC, you can choose Intel or AMD processor.

Since ArahWeave is Linux based, you can run Linux directly or in a virtual machine.

If you run it natively, it will run slightly faster and graphics will work better.

Which Linux should you choose? We recommend OpenSUSE but you may also use RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu or other versions.

If you use virtual machine, you avoid problems with unsupported hardware, as virtual machine will use drivers which are already working in Windows. Using virtual machine is better, if you rely on some Windows-only programs for your daily work, and you don’t want to dual boot your computer.

You can use Vmware or VirtualBox as your virtual machine.

On Linux, software will work better with NVidia graphics card, but AMD or Intel graphics is also supported.