plotter

This article explores the topic of layers, their name, and how they can be used to control the AxiDraw plotting process.

vpype 1.13 is out! 🎉 The main improvement is Python 3.11 support, but it does come with a few other bells and whistles, so let’s dive in. ...

Deep dive into the internals of my Automatic #plotloop Machine.

vpype 1.12 is out! 🎉 No ground-breaking features, but an improved “quality-of-life”, especially for Apple-silicon Mac owners, and few other goodies. Let’s dive in. ...

This release further solidifies the block commands which were overhauled in vpype 1.9. It also introduces several changes revolving around the “plotting with paint” use-case, which typically requires the brush to be regularly dipped in a paint well. This can be achieved by inserting “dipping” patterns at regular intervals determined by the cumulative drawing distance. vpype 1.11 makes this process much easier. Thanks a lot to Andee Collard for his useful feedback and providing this article’s banner!...

Hatch fills or pixel art plotting requires a rather precise estimate of your particular pen/paper combo’s stroke width. For example, this test pixel art plot would benefit from a slightly thinner pitch to avoid the visible overlap between neighbouring lines: There is no way around experience to find the optimal pitch. I’ve created the fill_test sketch to create custom charts with test patterns precisely tuned to the pen of interest. There is indeed no point to testing a rotring isograph ....

The problem Several generative art algorithms, such as Truchet tiles, use a regular grid of square cells. For example, check this interactive demo from the Generative Design book or these few pieces of mine. Now, let’s say you want to generate an iteration of your algorithm for printing or plotting such that all margins around the grid are the same for the given paper size. You can of course adjust the number of cell rows and columns, but how should you size the cell such as to achieve uniform margins?...

I originally intended vpype 1.10 to be a ‘quick-and-dirty’, bug-fix-only release but it ended up being quite substantial, so let’s dive in. New features and improvements Improved support for layer pen width and opacity in the viewer (#448) The “Pen Width” and “Pen Opacity” menus are now named “Default Pen Width” and “Default Pen Opacity”. The layer opacity is now used for display by default. It can be overridden by the default pen opacity by checking the “Override” item from the “Default Pen Opacity” menu....

vpype \ text -l1 -p 0 3.5cm "Custom layer name/color/pen width" \ text -l2 -p 5cm 4.5cm -s 24 "Properties" \ text -l2 -p 2cm 5.5cm -s 20 "Expressions" \ text -l1 -p 6cm 6.5cm -s 24 "Better/new block processors" \ text -l2 -p 3cm 8cm "...and much more!" \ layout -m 0.3cm -l 10x3.5cm \ penwidth -l2 0.5mm \ color -l2 "%Color(226,200,0)%" \ color -l1 "%Color(3,118,207)%" \ color -l1 blue \ show -- vpype 1....