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Axidraw consumes SVG directly via an Inkscape extension and has an API to control at a lower level (presumably the Inkscape extension converts to the lower leve
by generj 5y ago
Axidraw consumes SVG directly via an Inkscape extension and has an API to control at a lower level (presumably the Inkscape extension converts to the lower level API). Axidraw doesn’t use GCode from what I understand.
There are a plethora of competitors/clones which do use GCode, and which require something like T2Laser to convert SVG to GCode.
The AxiDraw firmware and extension are open source though: https://github.com/evil-mad/axidraw https://github.com/evil-mad/axidraw
They also provide lots of single line fonts.
A lot of users also utilize something like https://github.com/abey79/vpype https://github.com/abey79/vpype to do post processing.
This has a lot of useful resources: https://github.com/beardicus/awesome-plotters#software https://github.com/beardicus/awesome-plotters#software
- edge17 5y agoAre there some downsides to using Gcode or something? Or are some of these other toolchains just different approaches?
- generj 5y agoI think it’s more intuitive to edit SVG than to edit Gcode for many people. One of the big reasons people like SVG is the support for multiple layers representing multiple pen colors, and most tools dealing with SVG support this. In Gcode that would require two separate files and running each separately. Axidraw will pause between layers to allow a pen swap then continue plotting. SVG also has groups which allows for the path optimization to only optimize within groups so the group is plotted at the same time. SVG is easy to export from Processing and other libraries. Not sure how easy Gcode is to create and export comparatively. I’m just getting started on this path so that’s all I know of. I tried the Gcode route with an Eleksmaker A3 before getting an Axidraw and comparatively the AxiDraw and the tooling Just Works whereas it felt like I was fighting the Eleksmaker to do what I wanted.