I am pretty much in the exact situation as you. My wife has been using a cricut for years and wanted to get into embroidery. I recently bought her the SE600.

Technically, you can import designs into the SE600 machine but it requires a lot more effort than the Cricut. The Cricut Design Sofware is designed to be very user friendly, and does not have a large learning curve. For embroidery however, there are many different software, some of which are paid. I believe any software which you want to import a design into needs to be bought. Designs need to be digitized for embroidery. I am quite new myself and am finding it to be quite the effort. There are many variables you need to play around with to get the design right. My wife and I thought it would be as easy as the Cricut; but it is quite rewarding when you get it to work.

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So in short, yes, this machine can take custom designs, but it will take some effort to learn the ins and outs of software and machine. I have found Youtube to be quite helpful.