Patent ID: 8335584

Claim:
An embroidery data generating apparatus comprising: a thread color acquisition device that acquires, as a plurality of available thread colors, colors of threads to be used in sewing an embroidery pattern; a line segment data generating device that generates line segment data, each piece of the line segment data representing a position of a line segment that corresponds to a target pixel, the target pixel being at least one of pixels represented by pixel data included in image data; a dividing device that, based on the pixel data, divides a whole area of an image represented by the image data into a plurality of divided areas; a determining device that, based on the pixel data corresponding to pixels within each of the divided areas, determines a representative color for each of the divided areas generated by the dividing device; an area thread color allocating device that compares the representative color for each of the divided areas determined by the determining device with the available thread colors acquired by the thread color acquisition device, and allocates to each of the divided areas at least one of the available thread colors that satisfies a predetermined condition, as at least one area thread color; an associating device that, based on a position, in the image, of the target pixel corresponding to each piece of the line segment data, generates an associated relationship between each piece of the line segment data generated by the line segment data generating device and one of the divided areas generated by the dividing device; an embroidery thread color allocating device that, based on the associated relationship generated by the associating device and an allocation result obtained by the area thread color allocating device, allocates to each piece of the line segment data one of the at least one area thread color that represents the color of the target pixel corresponding to each of the line segment data, as an embroidery thread color; a connecting line segment data generating device that, when a same thread color is allocated as the embroidery thread color to plural pieces of the line segment data by the embroidery thread color allocating device, generates connecting line segment data, each piece of the connecting line segment data representing a connecting line segment to connect two line segments respectively represented by two of the plural pieces of line segment data; and an embroidery data generating device that generates embroidery data including a sewing order, thread color data and needle drop point data, based on the line segment data generated by the line segment data generating device, the embroidery thread color allocated to each piece of the line segment data by the color allocating device and the connecting line segment data generated by the connecting line segment data generating device.