Arranging and stitch order

The Object menu aligns and distributes the selection, flips and rotates it, and sorts the design by colour.

Unless you say otherwise, NextStitch chooses the order itself: it sews by thread, each colour in one go, and takes the nearest shape next, wherever the picture stays the same — so you save thread changes and jumps without sorting anything. Where shapes overlap, the order in the Sewing order panel decides which lies on top — whatever their colours, except two plain fills of the same colour, which look alike either way. To have the machine sew exactly that order instead, turn on Sew in this order in that panel, or Sew in layer order in File ▸ Properties — both switch the same setting. Then Object ▸ Sort by colour groups the colours for you (Sort by colour).

Where fills start and end

Each fill starts next to where the stitching before it ended, and when the next shape is no more than 3 mm away, it ends right beside it, so shapes that touch or nearly touch are sewn one into the next with a single short stitch instead of a jump. To set a fill's start or end yourself, drag its markers in the stitch view; Auto start and end points writes the points into the design, where they stay when the shapes around them change.

Between elements that don't touch, the needle jumps across with the thread trailing behind. In the design's properties (File ▸ Properties), Trim jumps longer than makes the machine cut the thread on longer jumps, so nothing is left to snip by hand — and start and end points that sit close together keep jumps short in the first place.