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11. Designing for AxiDraw
11.1 General considerations
The AxiDraw is a pen potter, which is fundamentally a single function device. Its
sole function is to guide a pen (or other implement mounted in the pen holder)
along the set of vector lines, curves, and paths that you ask it to follow. All oth-
er things that the machine is ultimately capable of – such as drawing graphics,
writing text, or signing documents – are expressions of this basic function. It is
capable of drawing essentially anything that can be composed from a set of lines.
Certain object types are automatically treated as paths, for example circles and
rectangles. Other types of objects that are made of curves – like text – may need
to be converted from (editable) text into simple paths before plotting. You can
convert a selected object to a path by using the menu option Path > Object to
Path.
11.1.1 Objects that are not paths
The AxiDraw does not directly plot objects that are not made of paths. This in-
cludes pictures (raster or bitmap images, such as JPG, GIF, and PNG files), and
eects such as fills, gradients, and background colors. These kinds of things re-
quire conversion to paths before plotting. That is straightforward in some cases,
and not in others.
Two notable helper tools are the Hatch Fill extension (see §11.11 Filling shapes and
text, on page 72) and the various tools for converting images into sketches
(see §11.12 Vectorizing images, on page 74).
11.1.2 Importing graphics
The native file format of the AxiDraw software is SVG (“scalable vector graphics”
– a standard interchange format). You can create artwork directly in Inkscape or
use other programs that can export SVG directly, such as Adobe Illustrator or
CorelDRAW. Inkscape can also import artwork in formats including EPS, DXF, AI,
CDR, and PDF.
If you encounter diculties opening SVG documents into Inkscape, one ap-
proach that can help is to start with an empty document in Inkscape, and then
use the File > Import command to place your document. See the next section,
§11.2 Templates, on page 63, for more about empty documents.
It is worth noting that the file type itself is not always a reliable indicator of
whether or not the file suitable for use on the AxiDraw. For example, a PDF doc-
ument with vector paths from Adobe Illustrator will generally work very well,
but it is also possible to create a PDF that contains nothing but a picture in JPG
format. In the latter case, the image still isn’t vector graphics, even though it’s
tucked into a PDF file.
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