File formats

Octostitch’s own format

Format	Read	Write	Notes
.ostch	✅	✅	Octostitch’s native design format — fully editable objects, paths, project settings, colours, references and hoop. Your master copy.

Machine (stitch) formats

These carry stitches, not editable shapes. Great for exporting to sew, and for opening an existing design to resize or recolour.

Format	Read	Write	Machine family
PES	✅	✅	Brother
DST	✅	✅	Tajima (near-universal) — see the colour note below
JEF	✅	✅	Janome
VP3	✅	✅	Pfaff
EXP	✅	✅	Melco
XXX	✅	✅	Singer
HUS	✅	✅	Husqvarna
TAP	✅	✅	Happy

Colour in stitch formats

Most of these carry their own thread list. Two don’t:

• DST has no colour storage in the format itself. Octostitch writes the palette into spare space in the DST header as TC: records and reads them back, so a DST round-trips through Octostitch with its colours intact. Other software generally ignores those records, so assume a DST you send elsewhere arrives as stitches and colour-change stops only.
• TAP is a bare stream of stitch records with nowhere to put a palette at all. Octostitch writes a matching .edr colour file beside every .tap export — see Exporting.

Vector & image import

Format	Read	Write	Use
SVG	✅	—	Import vector artwork as editable paths
PNG, JPG/JPEG, BMP, WebP, GIF	✅	—	Reference images and auto-digitising

Other exports

Format	Read	Write	Use
PDF	—	✅	Production worksheet — job sheet + 1:1 template
.edr	✅	✅	Thread-colour sidecar written beside a .tap export, and picked up automatically when one is imported

Custom asset formats

Format	Use
.octofont	Custom satin embroidery fonts
.octodeco	Custom decorative motifs
.octotatami	Custom tatami patterns for parallel fills
.json (palette)	Custom thread palettes