First, you need to correct any float errors. This should be easy by using graphical statistics of long floats, separately for warp face, warp back, weft face, weft back. On this report, you specify which float is still acceptable for you, and look at long floats marked in red. You can remove them manually or automatically.

Using the graphical view of hooks lifting, it will be easy to decide, should the fabric be reversed prior to weaving. If more than 50% of hooks would be raised on the average, reversing it will reduce wear & tear of your machinery.

The final step is to enter your loom layout: where does the pattern start, where are your selvedges and which weave do you want to use for them, etc. Skipping of hooks for lowering warp density or any other complex re-arrangement of pattern hooks is implemented by Weave shuffle function.

Output to all formats of major producers of electronic jacquards and punch card machines:

• Bonas EP® .ep (including support for compression and multiple floppies)
• Grosse® .wea (including support for multiple floppies)
• Schleicher®
• Stäubli® JC3 (non-DOS floppy, one design per floppy)
• Stäubli® JC4, JC4B (non-DOS floppy, several designs per floppy possible)
• Stäubli® JC5 .jc5 (including support for compression and multiple floppies)
• Stäubli® JC6 .jc5 (with fabric simulation for the file icon on the loom)
• Takemura .dat
• TIS®/Actrom® (including support for multiple floppies)
• Veritex .pat

ArahWeave can write the Stäubli® JC3 and JC4 format also as regular DOS files, for sending by e-mail, and then they need to be converted to Stäubli® floppy for weaving using the program dskjc4.exe (on DOS) or wdskjc4.exe (on Windows). Loading of these formats is also supported. Jacquard or dobby weave can also be loaded or saved as:

• TIFF
• GIF
• BMP
• PCX
• PNG

Whenever we can, we also support formats of the competition. This helps in making the transition to ArahWeave, or for easing work in heterogeneous environment. Therefore we can also read color images and card formats, and write card formats of:

• IAM (color images and weaves)
• EAT (color images and weaves, older version of format, not .eatpc)
• QTE (jacquard card format: .QTE for cards, .MOT for weaves)
• JD&N (uses TIFF format for weaves and for images)
• Sophis (color images and weaves)

These formats were implemented by reverse-engineering the files of respective companies, without any documentation, or their commitment to the current state of file format. So we can not guarantee that it will also be supported in the future. We are always interested in supporting more file formats of competitive products, so if you send us the files, we will try to implement the read support for them. But we belive that companies, which still hide their file formats, and charge extra money for support of any normal graphics format, will soon become irrelevant. So this will not be a big problem in the future.

Nostalgia special!

Preview of jacquard cards in Verdol format:

Since most modern mills use electronic jacquards, less and less people are familiar with the good old Verdol paper cards. So we have also included a linear preview of "cards". At the end of the hooks, there is also electronic weft information, indicated by grey background color. In this case, it contains the weft change.

Can I use my old designs on floppies?

Of course: ArahWeave can read and write all major electronic jacquard formats. Then we have special tools to extract weft change or regulator, remove selvedges or unused hooks, then re-position your design according to a different loom layout, and save it in a different jacquard format. If you have used some other CAD in the past, or relied on external design studio; your previous design work is not lost.

Can I reuse the weaves from my old designs on floppies?

Piece of cake! Load in the old weave / card image, select an area of the weave with middle mouse button, select function Find repeat in selection, and then Reduce to selected area. Save the resulting weave, and you are ready to reuse it in your new desings. You can make your custom weave library based on your old desings within couple of minutes.

How about network?

ArahWeave supports direct networking to Bonas, Stäubli JC4, Stäubli JC5 and Stäubli JC6 controllers. All you need is a regular TCP/IP network between the jacquard controllers and the ArahWeave CAD station. Jacquard controllers need to be equipped with the network card. Our software allows you to load files directly from the loom, delete them, or send new designs to the loom. You can send one file to multiple looms with one command.

I have Bonas, Grosse and Stäubli jacquards. Can I transfer designs from one loom to another?

If you have several looms with the same number of design hooks, but different brand or model of jacquard controller, position of selvedges, weft change and other controls, you can also use ArahWeave to convert designs from one format to the other, using these simple steps:

• Load the jacquard file
• Load loom layout corresponding to that file
• Extract data using loom layout
• Load loom layout of a different loom
• Send/save file to/for the different loom