Resources

Simple, modern, and precise pen plotters.

Makelangelo 5 is a beautiful picture drawing robot. The Makelangelo can draw up to A1 sized pictures on a window, whiteboard, or easel with Sharpie or dry-erase markers. Use coupon "DRAWINGBOTS10" for 10% off!

Line-us is an portable internet connected robot drawing arm.

XY Plotter Robot Kit is a drawing robot that can move a pen or other instrument to draw digital artwork on flat surface

CylinDraw lets you easily create incredible art on any kind of cup

Pen Plotter. Use Coupon "drawingbots" for 15% off during purchase!

The ACRO A1 Series is your gateway to creative precision and automated artistry. Created with the artist in mind the ACRO A1 uses the most popular A series media, from A1 to A10 Built on the proven ACRO System, this innovative machine combines smooth motion and accuracy to bring your sketches, designs, and ideas to life.

Open source turtle robot made with 3D printed materials and some circuits

A plotter/drawing machine that uses 20x40mm and 20x20mm aluminium extrusion for both structure and linear guides.

3D printed Drawing robot. It is powered by an Arduino Uno controller, uses a CNC Shield, and GRBL firmware. The approximate cost to build this drawing robot is $100.

In this forum post you will find a roundup of plotters and drawing robots from around the world.

Very small DIY plotter that you can 3D print and put together.

CylinDraw lets you easily create incredible art on any kind of cup

A 3D Printable Pen Plotter Toolhead for the Creality Ender 3 3D Printer

The cheapest, simplest pen plotter. A BrachioGraph can be built in an hour or so without any special skills. The total cost of all components can be as low as €15 or so. Apart from a Raspberry Pi computer and some hobby servo motors, the plotter can be built with everyday household items such as a clothes-peg.

Huge plotter that can do graffiti

Raspberry Pi Camera mount for AxiDraw, made out of LEGO

DIY Wall Drawing Robot

This research aims at exploring the potential to extend the creative capabilities of a pen plotter. While commercial pen plotters offer limited possibilities for controlling a pen’s pressure or its height in relation to the drawing surface, developing an advanced pen-lift mechanism would allow for dynamically controlling the height of a writing or drawing implement with adequate resolution. These improvements permit using an ink brush or pen with a flexible tip to modulate the stroke weight of the drawn lines.

The ACRO A1 Series is your gateway to creative precision and automated artistry. Created with the artist in mind the ACRO A1 uses the most popular A series media, from A1 to A10 Built on the proven ACRO System, this innovative machine combines smooth motion and accuracy to bring your sketches, designs, and ideas to life.

Mural - a low cost wall plotter

A list like this one (an inspiration)

Subreddit For Plotter Art

Twitter account for Plotter enthusiasts (coming soon)

A place to talk about drawing robots and challenges

A place to chat about drawing robots, share designs, links, etc

Hundreds of Free SVG files for plotters and other 2D CNC machines

The ACRO A1 Series is your gateway to creative precision and automated artistry. Created with the artist in mind the ACRO A1 uses the most popular A series media, from A1 to A10 Built on the proven ACRO System, this innovative machine combines smooth motion and accuracy to bring your sketches, designs, and ideas to life.

TPLang (with modifications) -> G-Code in pure JavaScript

Two interesting free software packages (Windows only)

Converts text to postcards and written gcode

Converter for SVG and HPGL to gcode for a 3-axis GCode machine

Draw in canvas with javascript and export a gcode file

A raspberry pi based print server to control your plotter. It can convert images to drawings, has a gallery with all previous prints and has a live print preview to check the progress of your drawings.

A simple processing sketch to generate gcodes/svgs of sudoku riddles.

abnodes-GCode Exporter is a Blender addon that allows you to export geometry node toolpaths as G-code for CNC machines, 3D printers, laser cutters, and pen plotters.

A tool for creating graphical vector patterns, animations or illustrations using a node-based interface where you define a sequence of connected nodes that describe the design, each representing graphical elements, changes or repetitions.

Series of visual experiments in JavaScript exploring the topic of differential growth as a method for generating interesting 2D forms

Turns audio recordings into a drawing

SVGs and designs made with QuickDraw dataset

Create designs for unique boxes, custom enclosures. Can be used with LaserCutting

Circular designs generator

JavaScript library for creating and sharing modular line drawings for CNC

Generates maps of imaginary medieval cities

Generates maps of the world

Creates Mandala designs

Generates Spirals with noise

Some Moire patterns made with D3

A few tools for creative image -> SVG conversion

Generates Curved polygons

Image 2 Delaunay triangulation

3D Line Art Engine

A framework for making generative artwork in JavaScript and the browser.

Processing app to create an SVG based on the brightness of an image transformed into sine waves.

Browser tool for fast image -> squiggle drawing conversion

Software that can create stipple drawings and “TSP art,” from image files

Tools for pen plotting in Python

Upload an image to generate a single line (Hilbert Curve) representation of it

A different kind of Spirograph

Spirograph made with Processing

Creates SVGs of Mazes

Generates Kolam artworks

Image to ASCII generator

Image to Spiral Raster generator

Some generative art generators made with Processing

Makes imaginary cities that look hand-drawn

Website where your can create SVG's using a minimalistic Turtle graphics API

Haskell tool for SVG 2 GCode conversion

SVG Path Transformation library

Drawbot_image_to_gcode_v2

Generative circuit generator in 35c3 style by Bleeptrack

Flower Generator from Bleeptrack

Convert images to vectorized line drawings for plotters.

Processing scripts to create different plottable versions of images

Generates scribbly g-code from images

Stylized 3d scene to SVG conversion for plotting, inspired by Escher's woodcuts.

A port of Evil Mad Scientist's StippleGen Processing app to full desktop Java

A Web Based tool for making of mandala-esque plotter pieces

Two interesting free software packages (Windows only)

Processing Boilerplate with Gcode Export

Virtual machine to generate cool art and download SVGs. It lets you create unique generative art by making serendipitous discoveries through experimentation.

A System for Making Generative Systems from @inconvergent

The Swiss Army knife of vector graphics for pen plotters

This package provides an R API to control the AxiDraw pen plotter

Make a ridge line chart from any region on Earth

SVG and GCode generator for single line drawings

Experimental computational design platform for exploring generative space

A Hierarchical Generative Network for Vector Graphics Animation.

Browser based tool to crop SVGs using a rectangle, circle, polygon or custom shape.

Hundreds of Free SVG files for plotters and other 2D CNC machines

Create contour maps

Elixir SVG graphics library and art scripts to draw with a pen plotter.

Minimalist vector tool for pen plotter artists

lineboi3000 is a way cool graphical interface for drawing, painting, adding EFX, and then sending your designs to a pen plotter or creating animations

Generates STL 3D file of area on the map.

NodeBox makes it easy to do data visualisations and generative design

Drawing Bot is a free, open source software for converting images to line drawings for Plotters / Drawing Machines / 3D printers. It also serves as an application for visual artists to create stylised line drawings from images / video.

Process 3D STLs for 3D printing into 2D SVGs for plotting

Lots of common plotter Java algorithms for generating SVGs in a single convenient web app

In goes a midi file or a simple markup format, and out comes polylines, which can then be used for animation, plotting and various procedural drawing fun.

A list of existing tools that convert 3D objects to plottable SVG files

Programmable Scalable Vector Graphics -- drawings that draw themselves

Machine Learning-powered handwriting generator with option to save arbitrary generated handwriting as SVG

A Chrome-specific bookmarklet that extracts SVG nodes and accompanying styles from an HTML document and downloads them as an SVG file

A NodeJS-compatible JavaScript tool for tracing bitmaps.

A tool that generates SVGs of flowcharts from structured text

A tool by @probabletrain for creating procedural city maps in the browser, downloadable as SVG files

a tool for generating Islamic tiling geometric patterns

A tool for generating SVGs of audio waveforms from sound files

A Python 3 library for programmatically generating SVG images and rendering them or displaying them in a Jupyter notebook.

Beautiful SVG shape generator

A tool for generating flow line representations using SVG paths / polylines

Create SVG contours of terrain maps

2D superformula line-art generator built in Processing, with SVG export for use in digital fabrication workflows.

SVG Optimizer (SVGO) is a Node.js-based tool for optimizing SVG vector graphics files. This tool removes redundant and useless information such as editor metadata, comments, hidden elements, etc., without affecting rendering. Also see the SVGO GUI, https://github.com/jakearchibald/svgomg.

TSP SVG Generator from 1 bit images

A P5.js sketch for creating SVG drawings

Mandala explorer with SVG Export option

Inkscape extension for removing duplicate lines in SVG files

A tool for building SVG streamlines from a 2d vector field

A simple processing sketch to generate gcodes/svgs of sudoku riddles.

Free SVG optimizer for plotter and CNC users.

CLI tool to rapidly create sketches with p5.js and Typescript

Online tool for Tracing Pixels To Vectors in Full Color

Web based open source tool for raster to vector conversion

Easy and quick online elevation contour map generator. Has high accuracy LiDAR data and more. Can also create SVG by exporting as dxf and converting online

The p5.plotSvg library allows the p5.js creative coding toolkit to generate SVG files specifically tailored for pen plotters.

Javascript port of Vpype. The plotter SVG toolkit, running entirely in your browser. Drop an SVG below to optimize it for plotting — merge and sort paths to slash pen-up travel — or compose generative plots with chained pipelines, Hershey text, and HPGL export.

TSP Solver algorithm for optimizing pen travel

Python tool for converting SVG to GCode

Another SVG2GCode conversion tool

Tutorial on making line artworks

Command-line tool for optimizing and visualizing the drawing order of SVG graphics for pen plotting.

JS script for simplification of SVG lines

Converts raster images to SVG, using color-run optimization.

F-Engrave is a text or image to g-code program

Processing scripts to create different plottable versions of images

Generates scribbly g-code from images

The Cohen-Sutherland Line Clipping Algorithm

Medial (and Scale) Axis Transform library - SVG focused

On fine art and generative line drawings

A technique for tiling the plane with regular polygons

A new algorithm for retrieving topological skeleton as a set of polylines from binary images

Experimental computational design platform for exploring generative space

Browser based tool to crop SVGs using a rectangle, circle, polygon or custom shape.

CozyVec by @brubsby is "a tiny terminal program for creating plotter art" with JavaScript.

A Python 3 library for programmatically generating SVG images and rendering them or displaying them in a Jupyter notebook.

TSP SVG Generator from 1 bit images

A P5.js sketch for creating SVG drawings

Abstracting Images into Continuous Line Artistic Styles

Free book about 3D math, the geometry and algebra of 3D space. It is designed to teach you how to describe objects and their positions, orientations, and trajectories in 3D using mathematics.

Javascript port of Vpype. The plotter SVG toolkit, running entirely in your browser. Drop an SVG below to optimize it for plotting — merge and sort paths to slash pen-up travel — or compose generative plots with chained pipelines, Hershey text, and HPGL export.

A list of pens and papers that are community favorites

Comprehensive chronological list of papers used by plotter artists

Parametric OpenSCAD code to create custom pen adapters.

Pen adapter for HP7475a, holds Pilot LG2RF refills. Add the spring from any common ballpoint pen to keep pressure on the refill cartridge.

"A complete solution for controlling AxiDraw via local server and browser application Comes with generators for a map, terrain and Lorenz attractor"

Unofficial driver software for AxiDraw

saxi is a tool for interacting with the AxiDraw drawing machine by Evil Mad Scientist. It comes with an easy-to-use interface, and is exactingly precise.

I had written up this Processing boilerplate for generating Gcode for my cheap chinese plotter based on GRBL.

Makelangelo software that provides a beautiful, intuitive interface to drive your polargraph drawing robot

Processing Boilerplate with Gcode Export

This package provides an R API to control the AxiDraw pen plotter

Easily control an AxiDraw drawing machine from Figma. Prepare your vector art and send it to the plotter in one click.

Taxi is an opinionated touch screen Axidraw GUI

Pen Plotter Webserver for RPI0

A raspberry pi based print server to control your plotter. It can convert images to drawings, has a gallery with all previous prints and has a live print preview to check the progress of your drawings.

A terminal based client for Universal Gcode Sender, making it possible to connect to a controller and send G-code files without any fancy GUI's. The program uses the same stable and well tested backend as UGS Classic and UGS Platform.

Some line drawings as SVGs

3D prints that could be converted to SVGs

Circuit board designs can be drawn with plotters

Various open source map icons

Millions of vector icons

Lots and lots of ready to plot vector designs

Dimensions.Guide is a comprehensive reference database of dimensioned drawings documenting the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world.

Create contour maps

A Chrome-specific bookmarklet that extracts SVG nodes and accompanying styles from an HTML document and downloads them as an SVG file

Easy and quick online elevation contour map generator. Has high accuracy LiDAR data and more. Can also create SVG by exporting as dxf and converting online

Article Comparing specs and prices of 24 plotters

A Brief History of Technical Lettering Tools

An article for people thinking about buying an AxiDraw. 5 dos and don'ts taken from author's experience

Tools, Tricks, and Hacks: Exploring Novel Digital Fabrication Workflows on #PlotterTwitter

This research aims at exploring the potential to extend the creative capabilities of a pen plotter. While commercial pen plotters offer limited possibilities for controlling a pen’s pressure or its height in relation to the drawing surface, developing an advanced pen-lift mechanism would allow for dynamically controlling the height of a writing or drawing implement with adequate resolution. These improvements permit using an ink brush or pen with a flexible tip to modulate the stroke weight of the drawn lines.

From Lettering Guides to CNC Plotters. A Brief History of Technical Lettering Tools

Fonts that are working well for plotters, drawing robots and laser engraving

This tool converts the common True Type Font (.ttf) files to Hershey font format

Type text and export to single stroke SVG for your plotter!

Fonts suitable for plotters or for laser cutters / engravers and CNC milling. Perfect for creating plottable text!

A browser-based tool to render single-line/SVG fonts and export text as SVG files made for CNC machines and pen plotters.

hfmath is a tiny JS tool for rendering mathematics using single-line Hershey Fonts

p5.js Hershey Vector Font Library

Convert Chinese Characters to Single-Line Fonts using Computer Vision

Relief SingleLine is a versatile sans serif “single-line” font with open paths oriented towards CNC (Computer Numerical Control) engraving and fab labs environments.

Browser based editor for single line text. Has over 40 fonts available for use

This is a repository of p5.js programs for loading and displaying single-line vector fonts. The repo includes an authoritative archive of single-line fonts in a wide variety of formats, including TTF, SVG Font, Hershey Font, and others.

Manual for AxiDraw drawing machines from the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Roland DXY-990 Operation Manual in PDF form

Operations and Interconnection Manual for the Hewlett Packard HP 7475A graphics pen plotter.

Interfacing and Programming Manual for the Hewlett Packard HP 7475A graphics pen plotter

Operation Manual for the Roland DXY-880 X-Y Pen Plotter

Scanned by Paul Haeberli Noveber 2020

Operation Manual for Houston Instrument DMP-160 series plotters. Scanned by Jimmy Kirkus-Lamont