Plottie: A little plotting/cutting program for Silhouette Plotters

Plottie is a command-line tool for plotting and cutting outlines from SVG vector graphics using the Silhouette series of desktop plotters/cutters.

Key features:

• Supports most common SVG features including beziers, shapes, simple text and dashed lines (via the svgoutline library).

• Supports registration marks allowing printed shapes to be accurately cut out or scored.

• Sensible defaults mean that registration marks, plot mode and the layers to include are usually auto-detected.

• Selectively filter what to cut or plot based on colour, layer or SVG object IDs or classes.

• Cut and mark order optimised for speed and integrity. For example, when cutting, the inner-most shapes are cut out first so adhesive-free cutting mats can be used. Alternatively, the order used in the provided SVG can be used instead if required.

• Inkscape-aware allowing layer names to be used to specify what to cut or plot. Also accounts for incorrect DPI settings in files produced prior to Inkscape v0.92.

Usage

Plottie can be installed from PyPI as usual:

$ pip install plottie

NB: Plottie requires Python 3.5+

In most cases, all you need to do is run plottie with your SVG file as the argument:

$ plottie path/to/my/drawing.svg

If you don't have a device attached, you can use the --use-dummy-device/-D option to instead generate an SVG showing the cuts or marks to be made:

$ plottie path/to/my/drawing.svg -D cuts_made.svg

By default Plottie will attempt to work out whether you want to cut or plot the outlines in the supplied file by looking for Inkscape layer names with names like Cut or Plot. You can override this (or choose the appropriate mode for non-Inkscape SVGs) using the --plot/-p or --cut/-c arguments:

$ plottie --plot file/to/plot.svg

The speed and force used for cutting and plotting may be specified either in mm/s or g (respectively) or as a percentage of the device's supported values using the --speed/-S and --force/-F options. By default 100% speed and 20% force are used. For example, these could be overridden when cutting out a particularly tough material like so:

$ plottie --speed 50% --force 100% path/to/my/drawing.svg

By default, Plottie will plot or cut all stroked paths from Inkscape layers with names like 'Cut' or 'Plot', making them visible if they are hidden and hiding all other layers. Various options are provided for specifying alternative filters, for example:

$ # Include everything already visible
$ plottie --all path/to/my/drawing.svg

$ # Include only the Inkscape layer called 'Picture Outline'
$ plottie --layer "Picture Outline" path/to/my/drawing.svg

$ # Include only the object with SVG ID 'object1234' (and its chidren)
$ plottie --id object1234 path/to/my/drawing.svg

$ # Include just objects (and their children) with SVG class name 'cuttable'
$ plottie --class cuttable path/to/my/drawing.svg

$ # Include onjects with a red stroke colour
$ plottie --colour '#FF0000' path/to/my/drawing.svg

To see the complete set of options, and for more detailed documentation, use --help/-h.

Example files

An example Inkscape SVG demonstrating the use of registration marks and cutting features is included in examples/cutting_example.svg. This file can be directly printed to an A4 page and then cut out using:

$ plottie examples/cutting_example.svg

For convenience, a template set of registration marks is also provided in examples/regmark_template.svg which includes correctly sized markers and strokes.

Comparison with other software

Plottie is intended to be a relatively robust and featureful tool for cutting and plotting using Silhouette plotters and cutters.

The official Silhouette Studio software provides a complete integrated design and cutting solution. Plottie, by comparison, provides only a command-line based cutting/plotting function. All design and drawing tasks are deferred to more capable tools (such as Inkscape or Illustrator). Plottie also works on more platforms, including Linux.

There are also numerous other unofficial tools for driving Silhouette plotters, most notably Robocut and Inkscape-Silhouette). Unlike Plottie, both of these tools provide graphical interfaces and direct integrations with graphics packages such as Inkscape. However, both have limitations in terms of their lack of support for some SVG features (notably including text and dashed lines). Further, dealing with registration marks and selecting layers to print, vs those to plot is typically a fairly manual process.

As a command-line only tool, Plottie is not suited to everyone. However, for those comfortable with such interfaces, Plottie may arguably be easier and quicker to use than the tools above, particularly given its numerous automatic features. For particularly complex or batch jobs, Plottie can also be driven as part of a shell script.

License

GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPLv3)