A method and system are disclosed for automatically generating embroidery designs. A described method includes identifying vertices in a set of chain-code points defining an edge of a first object to be embroidered; filtering the vertices by: determining whether a height of a first triangle defined by a first one of the vertices and ones of the vertices that neighbor the first one of the vertices is at least a threshold; and when the height is less than the threshold, eliminating the first one of the vertices from the vertices; and generating embroidery data based on the filtered vertices.