Gantt Chart Software for Mac OS Create a Gantt chart on Mac to manage activities and schedule tasks with our smart Gantt chart tool. Super user-friendly, it has been considered as a popular Gantt chart alternative to Microsoft Visio. Ready to publish to PDF/Word/PNG/SVG/Html to share with others. When generating written output, Stitchmastery always condenses instructions. E.g., a 16 stitch chart row of k2, p2 is written as (k2, p2) x 4. In addition, repeats can be explicitly added to a chart so that a chart 9 stitches wide can be output as ssk, yo, (k2tog, yo, k3, k2tog, yo) 5 times.
Good old Excel. This spreadsheet app has been around forever, and its uses are myriad. You can keep a stash list, make charts, and keep track of pattern rows as you knit. I use it mostly for chart-making when I want to to edit the pattern on the fly—something that’s impossible with a graphics-based program such as Knit Visualizer.
I’m going to spend this entire entry on Excel for several reasons. First, there’s a spreadsheet program available for every platform—PC, Mac, and Linux. And I’ve gotten a lot of mail complaining about the PC-centric nature of knitting software. Second, charting patterns is fun and many people want to get started with it. Third, Excel (and its cousins) is fairly easy to master, and I can provide you guys with templates and fonts.
These files are available in the Files section of the knittingsoftware Yahoo group that I started a few minutes ago while I was writing this section (isn't the Internet wonderful?).
Everyone is welcome to join the group, however, please don’t expect me to give you technical service! The members should all help each other. I’ll try to answer questions as best I can, but there’s a limit to my time. I’m a big believer in everyone helping everyone, so feel free to jump in and play.
All you need to get started charting in a spreadsheet is a good font and a bit of knowledge about spreadsheet software. I can’t help you with the second part, but I can direct you to several fonts that will be very useful.
Fonts
If you went to the Yahoo group and looked in the Files section, you’ll see two TrueType fonts: JKnit and LaceKnit. There are many common symbols, but the arrangement is different and the orientation is different too. JKnit has symbols specific to Japanese charts, while LaceKnit is probably a better font if you want to graph lace.
In addition to these, there are two fonts, free for the taking, on the Internet.
David Xenakis has designed the exceptionally attractive and useful Knitters Symbols Fonts for both the PC and the Mac. He further offers these fonts free of charge. You can download them here.
Aire River Design offers another free, nice-looking knitting font, with several interesting cable variations. Download information is here.
If you are only charting simple patterns, you can probably get by with the WingDings font, which ships with both the Mac and PC. (Sorry Linux folks, I don’t know what, if anything, ships with your OS.)
If none of these fonts appeal to you, or you need specific symbols that these typefaces lack, there is the option of designing your own fonts using programs such as Fontographer, FontMonger, or FontLab.
I own both Fontographer and FontMonger and used them to design JKnit and LaceKnit. Note that both fonts are works in progress, as I am continually improving and adding to them, as I find more symbols that I need.
The bad news is that FontMonger is an old legacy program from the Windows 3.1 era—I don’t think you can find it anywhere at this point. Fontographer is available from various sources (including FontLab), but suffers from a rather nasty problem of not being able to run on machines with more than 512MB of RAM without special application-fooling software.* However, there are several similar, and more contemporaryfont design programs available, such as FontLab. You can go explore them here.
*(You can download such a program here. It's amazing! It lies to the operating system about a whole bunch of things and lets you run programs that require a specific version of Windows, memory settings, and so on.)
Now that you have some fonts, the next thing you need is graph paper. You can download my Excel template or set up your spreadsheet yourself. I prefer square cells. In my case, I use 13.2 for the Row Height and 1.67 for the Column Width. I have no idea what these values refer to. You would think, given the resulting square cell, that the values should be identical. One of those peculiar software mysteries, I guess.The next things you need are numbered rows and columns. Here’s where Excel’s formulas really shine. As you can see from the picture below, the right side and bottom of this chart have a colored bar where the row and column numbers reside. I filled the bars with a green background. Then I typed the number 1 in the appropriate row and column cells. You can see the neatly formatted numbers in the next screen shot.
Rather than laboriously typing in the rest of the numbers, I created a simple formula for Row 2 and Column 2,which is the contents of Row (or Column 1) +1. Then I cloned the formula into all the Row and Column cells. You can do this by copying and pasting or by dragging. Excel automatically creates the correct references. (I reiterate that you need a bit of spreadsheet knowledge to perform some of these steps).
Next, I formatted the contents of the chart itself to be all JKnit font by selecting the interior cells and choose JKnit from the Font drop-down list.
Now you are ready to begin.
There are three ways to enter symbols:
1. By printing a sample sheet of the font characters for reference and typing in the appropriate characters. You can do this by dowloading a font utility such as Font Viewer for the PC. I believe that Macs ship with a utility that can print sample sheets. Linux folks, you are on your own (sorry).
3.By using an On-Screen keyboard utility. In Windows, you will find this feature in the Start Menu, under Accessibility. (I don’t know if anything similar is available for other operating systems. )
A little typing, some nice borders, and you have a neat chart ready to go.
At this point, you will have to experiment. Neither of my fonts contain cable glyphs, because I don’t care for the look of cables, will never design for them, and hate to knit them as well. However, the fonts designed by David Xenakis and
Or, you may have to actually use Microsoft Word and type the symbols in, as suggested by David in his ReadMe file.
After you’ve created your chart, you can work with it in Excel, too. Just highlight the row you’re on and use the Up/Down keys to move backward or forward through the chart. Note that you can also load a picture into Excel as reference if you wish.
I, of course, never frog anything, so I only use the Up Arrow key.
If you wish, you can transfer the pattern to your PDA and carry the pattern with you. Be aware that you might have to generate special fonts for your handheld to see the correct characters.
By the way, I use PlanMaker on my Axim handheld (that’s what this screen shot is showing), because Pocket Excel, a truly feeble excuse for a spreadsheet, strips out images. (My Linux PDA's spreadsheet program retains pictures.) Why Microsoft decided to remove this feature is another one of those Stupid Software Decisions that benefits the folks who make PlanMaker, and not anyone else.
You’ll see in another episode of this treatise, which is quickly approaching the size of an telephone book, why I want pictures to display inside of spreadsheets.
The next post will deal with other charting software. Next week, I hope.
How to Make Your Own Knitting Chart Online for Free
Now that I am making my own knitting patterns, I have found a few great online tools to help me make the charts and I wanted to share them with you all.
Option 1: Excel spreadsheets/Google Sheets
One way to make a knitting chart is to use Excel! This is a great option….if you already have Microsoft Office. I was lucky enough to get mine through school, otherwise it costs $150 for Office Home. So in my mind, this is an option “for free”. However if you do not have Excel, you can use Google Sheets for free!
Keep in mind that stitches are not perfectly square; they are more wide than they are tall. So if you make a chart using squares, the proportions are going to be way off. You could either figure out the dimensions according to your gauge, or use one that Jill Szalaj made over at her blog post. She had a free download for an Excel chart you can use! It’s what I have used for hand sketching out colored knit charts.
Keep in mind you will need a knitting font in order to have more complicated symbols. The “Knitter’s Symbols Fonts” by David Xenakis is available for free. I downloaded the “Knitter’s Symbols OpenType font for Macintosh”. The font download comes with a key on the symbols. To upload it to your computer so you can actual use it, click into the download, and click on “install font”. Then in your font book, drag the font name into “Windows Office Compatibility”. Here is a helpful YouTube video on how to install fonts in general.
Pros to this method:
- Can use offline from the internet (super nice at the cabin!)
- Undo and redo buttons
- Many symbol options depending on the font you us
Cons to this method:
- Excel costs money (Google Sheets is free but no knitting font)
- Need to know how to use Excel
- Must download a knitting font
Option 2: Chart Minder
Chart Minder is a free-to-use website for creating knitting charts. You can make a username, link to your Ravelry, and see other charts people have shared! There are so many cool features with this site! You can draw on the chart to create color designs rather than having to click on each stitch individually! You can have it displayed as stitches to see how it’ll look with the ‘v’ shape. You can generate color charts off of images you already have. You can show the dimensions to scale, so you can see how many inches your chart will take without having to do the math yourself. There are way more tools I haven’t even explored yet.
Pros to Chart Minder:
Free Knitting Design Software
- Preset gauges for different yarn types (bulky, aran, etc)
- Custom gauges also possible
- Generate color charts by uploading images
- Final results look more sleek/professional
- Can download a stitch key based off your pattern and download your image
Cons to Chart Minder:
Knitting Chart Software Free Mac
- Small variety of stitch types
- No undo/redo buttons
- Have to keep going back to your stitch palette to go from one stitch type to another, takes more time than using a knitting font
- Need internet, hard to work “off the grid”
- Cannot personalize the stitch key terms when downloading
How to Decide which option to use
I still haven’t decided which method I prefer, to be honest. I think it comes down to how skilled you are in using Excel. The advantage of the preset gauges in Chart Minder is huge though. Let me know in the comments how you make your charts and why you like one option over the other!