It won't always. Sometimes it's a question of illogical sequencing, but it may be it has to go under colour 2 and over colour 4, so you can't combine them. It's worth looking carefully when stitching it out the first time and making a note if you can. Hope this helps.

Marine is right (mops)... because of layering in a design, it's best to stick with the way the digitizer has it set up...and if they know what they're doing, they've tried to minimize thread changes as much as possible... and avoided so many jumps! lol

I usually check it on my 4D embroidery and when I attempt to color sort it will put together everything of the same color unless, of course, it is an overlay in which case it won't. Not sure how it knows one from the other but in the past year this has worked well for me. Usually with the freebies they don't always group the colors, so I guess that's why it works. The better digitized patterns don't have as many repeats anyway. Hope this helps.

I think you have your answer. I, too, use the Viking 3D (couldn't afford the 4D!) and it will group the colors together IF it's going to work right. Love the program.

Some designs with many color changes, can be sorted to fewer color changes. This will usually cause more jump stitches. Which is easier to deal with? You must use an "intelligent sort," or a mess will sometime occur. Some changes cannot be combined, due to overlying other stitching. You don't want an eye hidden under the face. A lot of flower shading and centers is another time when combining may not be desirable. A good "intelligent" sort will usually take these into consideration. Sometimes it is a good move, and others it is not. Some of the auto programs will put in unnecessary color changes. I may try it, and see what has changed in the deign, if it is not pleasing, I just undue the change, or save no changes, to recover the original. It all depends on the design. Many of the older DST format designs used a color change for each object. I saved hundreds of these, and when I have time, I take them into a program and convert to my format, one with color information, and separate all colors, to make changes then sort. Sometimes I do the sort manually by objects. I usually digitize in an old manual program that only saves to commercial formats, and I learned a lot about design construction by default. I also have 3D Studio and editor and some of the Embird programs.

I completely agree with mops on here advise. *2U

When i have alot of colour changes,i do my ironing at the same time,that way i get some house work done. Tried doing one colour at the time,it does not have a good look and is no faster.

Thanks everyone for the great answers. Guess I will stick with the color changes and not risk messing up the design.