Python helper routines for driving AxiDraw, EggBot, WaterColorBot, and similar plotter-based machines.

This repository maintained by Windell H. Oskay, Bantam Tools.

Source code and issue tracker are hosted at github.

Releases are available on PyPI.

To install the latest release, use pip install plotink

These library files are intended to provide a single place to edit routines that are common to the EggBot extensions for Inkscape, the WaterColorBot extensions for Inkscape, the AxiDraw extensions for Inkscape, and derivative machines. Hosting these in a single place means less duplication of code, and (more importantly) reduces the number of cases where identical code changes need to be made in multiple places.

The library files are:

• ebb_serial.py - General routines for communicating with the EiBotBoard by USB serial.
• ebb_motion.py - Motion-related routines for interacting with the robot.
• plot_utils.py - Additional helper functions for managing plots and their data.
• text_utils.py - Additional helper functions for managing text.
• rtree.py - Minimal R-tree spatial index class for calculating intersecting regions.
• spatial_grid.py - Specialized flat grid spatial index class for finding nearest neighbors.

Latest version requires Python 3.6 or newer.

A previous release, Plotink version 1.0.1, supports python 2.7 as well.

This library uses the standard python logging module. Suggested configurations follow.

For stand-alone machine control, print info, warnings, and errors to stdout:

import logging

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format='%(message)s')

For running as an Inkscape extension, print errors to Inkscape's extension errors log:

import logging

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.ERR,
        format='%(message)s'),
        filename = "~/.config/inkscape/extension-errors.log")