inklayers VS vpype

If your polygons are closed you can try using vpype with the occult plug in to automatically remove invisible paths. The catch is that they really need to be closed polygons and not lines. There may be another plug in that does handle lines though.

The basics: I generated this plot via a program I wrote. That program was written in Javascript, using the p5.js library for drawing lines and stuff, and canvas-sketch to generate the SVG for plotting. I passed the SVG through vpype to merge & sort the lines, and then connected to the AxiDraw using saxi. Not knowing where you're at, those are a good choice to get started—Javascript is an okay language, and p5.js is really good for just getting stuff appearing on the page. And you can just start with the first 2, and add vpype and saxi later.

Ah, very nice.

That should reduce the effort needed to something you might be able to make quick work of, yourself, with some thought.

this website [1] recommends a tool called vpype [2] which might have an option to do what you need or might be able to be tweaked to do what you need

[1] https://www.acrylicode.com/svg-to-gcode-walkthrough/

[2] https://github.com/abey79/vpype

vpype: https://github.com/abey79/vpype occult plugin for vpype: https://github.com/LoicGoulefert/occult

It is generated with code only. I scale, rotate and translate a random polygon, then remove hidden lines with occult, a plugin I made for vpype (worth checking for SVG optimization).

pip install git+https://github.com/abey79/vsketch#egg=vsketchDefaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeableCollecting vsketch Cloning https://github.com/abey79/vsketch to /tmp/pip-install-z2f8qeqh/vsketch_476eb7b32e4a43e9ae29175d979f1267 Running command git clone --filter=blob:none -q https://github.com/abey79/vsketch /tmp/pip-install-z2f8qeqh/vsketch_476eb7b32e4a43e9ae29175d979f1267 Resolved https://github.com/abey79/vsketch to commit 1f28fa8fa491a574d04cbe80ae82f61e3b3d17fb Installing build dependencies ... done Getting requirements to build wheel ... done Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... doneCollecting vpype[all]@ git+https://github.com/abey79/[email protected] Cloning https://github.com/abey79/vpype (to revision e8aab428b6790de03e36cd51aa30ca0612a38d87) to /tmp/pip-install-z2f8qeqh/vpype_529e4b4779de41eb909706b17c4bafe5 Running command git clone --filter=blob:none -q https://github.com/abey79/vpype /tmp/pip-install-z2f8qeqh/vpype_529e4b4779de41eb909706b17c4bafe5 Running command git rev-parse -q --verify 'sha^e8aab428b6790de03e36cd51aa30ca0612a38d87' Running command git fetch -q https://github.com/abey79/vpype e8aab428b6790de03e36cd51aa30ca0612a38d87 Resolved https://github.com/abey79/vpype to commit e8aab428b6790de03e36cd51aa30ca0612a38d87 Installing build dependencies ... done Getting requirements to build wheel ... done Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... doneRequirement already satisfied: Shapely[vectorized]<2.0.0,>=1.7.1 in ./.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages (from vsketch) (1.8.0)Collecting bezier>=2021.2.12 Using cached bezier-2021.2.12.tar.gz (313 kB) Preparing metadata (setup.py) ... error ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: command: /usr/bin/python -c 'import io, os, sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/tmp/pip-install-z2f8qeqh/bezier_a73eda2d953941fea05d9db7413b7234/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/tmp/pip-install-z2f8qeqh/bezier_a73eda2d953941fea05d9db7413b7234/setup.py'"'"';f = getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__) if os.path.exists(__file__) else io.StringIO('"'"'from setuptools import setup; setup()'"'"');code = f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' egg_info --egg-base /tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-t3gbjrvl cwd: /tmp/pip-install-z2f8qeqh/bezier_a73eda2d953941fea05d9db7413b7234/ Complete output (1 lines): The BEZIER_INSTALL_PREFIX environment variable must be set. ----------------------------------------WARNING: Discarding https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/cb/e8/0073ac3f92cbe8ced10e5e5822594a8f63b9a3dc91258c681b7ee96b80b0/bezier-2021.2.12.tar.gz#sha256=d0f752aeb420057ab761f962259c7ca00d925750e324c9bb729f2f10ad39529a (from https://pypi.org/simple/bezier/). Command errored out with exit status 1: python setup.py egg_info Check the logs for full command output.ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement bezier>=2021.2.12 (from vsketch) (from versions: 0.0.1, 0.1.0, 0.1.1, 0.2.0, 0.2.1, 0.3.0, 0.4.0, 0.5.0, 0.6.0, 0.6.1, 0.6.2, 0.6.3, 0.6.4, 0.7.0, 0.8.0, 0.9.0, 0.10.0, 0.11.0, 2020.1.14, 2020.2.3, 2020.5.19, 2021.2.12)ERROR: No matching distribution found for bezier>=2021.2.12

if you want to see how it's done in modern plotters/CNC, Bart Dring's [Grbl_ESP32](https://github.com/bdring/Grbl_Esp32) is fairly easy to follow with good docs. I have one of Bart's plotters, as I don't have space or money for an Axidraw with all my other old plotters around the place.

For actual optimization of input files, [vpype](https://github.com/abey79/vpype)'s the one most people use.

Going back to really old/simple plotters, there wasn't enough code space to do any optimization. For example, the (fairly terrible) Commodore 1520 roll paper plotter had 2KB of ROM for all the 6502-compatible code its micro-controller used. When I first looked into the [firmware](https://e4aws.silverdr.com/hacks/6500_1/), I was pretty shocked that it printed text by scanning a table of character data from the start every time. Then I realized that even storing pointers for each character would use up about ⅛ of total storage, and the mechanical plotter mechanism was always way behind anything the code could do. So small mattered more than efficient