Snooze 2978 is correct. It can apply to embroidery designs and longarm quilting patterns. (plus who knows what else quilting related or otherwise). For example--- You have a business logo you want to embroider on a shirt. You would need to digitize the logo- convert it into an embroidery pattern. Once that happens the embroidery machine would know how many stitches and where to put them to recreate the logo.