Patent ID: 8335583

Claim:
An embroidery data generating apparatus that generates embroidery data for an embroidery pattern, the embroidery data generating apparatus comprising: a boundary line acquisition device that acquires boundary line data that is data that specifies a boundary line that surrounds a closed region that has a shape; a unit area arrangement device that contiguously arranges first unit areas over the entire closed region that is specified by the boundary line data that is acquired by the boundary line acquisition device, each of the first unit areas being a rectangular area that is obtained by dividing a second unit area into fourths and that includes a unit line segment as a diagonal line of the rectangular area, the second unit area being a rectangular area in which two line segments that intersect one another at a midpoint of each of the two line segments serve as diagonal lines and defining an area for a cross-stitch, the unit line segment extending from an intersection of the two line segments to one of endpoints of the two line segments; a coverage rate computation device that computes a coverage rate that is a ratio of the closed region in each of the first unit areas that are arranged by the unit area arrangement device; a determination device that determines whether a stitch will be formed on the unit line segment in each of the first unit areas, based on the coverage rate that is computed by the coverage rate computation device; an embroidery data generating device that generates the embroidery data for the embroidery pattern that is formed by a plurality of cross-stitches based on a determination by the determination device, each of the cross-stitches including at least one stitch formed on at least one of a plurality of unit line segments included in four of the first unit areas obtained from the second unit area; an overlap computation device that computes an overlap length that is a length of a portion of the unit line segment that overlaps the closed region in each of the first unit areas; and an overlap rate computation device that computes, as the coverage rate, a ratio of the overlap length that is computed by the overlap computation device in relation to a length of the unit line segment.