Hey Michael,

Yes, I personally think this would make sense to add directly into Inkscape. We already have Gcodetools extensions in trunk (which is "special case" like embroidery), so to me it seems like it would be a great fit to extend the functionality of Inkscape to include this.

Do you have your code hosted anywhere online for other to take a look at and/or test?

Cheers,
Josh

On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 6:39 AM, Michael Soegtrop <MSoegtrop@...889...> wrote:
Dear Inkscape Developers,

I added a few features to Inkscape for use in embroidery, because the
commercial tools available don't offer the artistic flexibility I want.
I would like to have your opinion on if you think it makes sense to
integrate such functionality into the Inkscape mainline, or if it would
be too much of a stretch. It boils down to some LPEs and an export
format. The commercial tool I have from Bernina (a Swiss sewing machine
manufacturer) is based on Corel Draw.

Below is a list of the additions I did / I am working on.

Please let me know what you think about this. With these additions,
Inkscape offers substantially more flexibility than affordable
commercial SW (and affordable here means 500..1000$).

Best regards,

Michael


1.) Ways to fill an area with clusters of contours

Inkscape already offers 2 path interpolation LPEs which allow this. I
plan to add a 3rd one which creates a set of equidistant inset/outset paths.


2.) A way to connect sub path of a path into one continuous path

I added an LPE to do this with various options of end interpolation.
Maybe if I use bool-ops I need to extend it with some sort of sorting,
cutting and auto reversing mechanism to keep the connections short.


3.) A way to cut a path into stitches (straight line segments) in a
controlled way.

I added an LPE to do this, but it is quite primitive as yet.


4.) Bool ops on paths because in embroidery you cannot simply hide an
object below another one.

I just added a bool-op LPE for this - needs some additional work to cut
contours against a closed path.


5.) A tool to convert graphics output to some format an embroidery /
sewing machines can read.

I wrote an external tool to convert HPGL to a common embroidery format
(stitch/DST), but could also integrate this into Inkscape.


6.) Maybe a tool to hide connections between path segments below filled
areas. For a sewing machine it is quite complicated to do a "pen up" -
it has to cut the threads, so one typically hides connection paths below
some embroidery to avoid thread cutting.

Currently I do this semi-manually. Doing this automatically might be
quite complicated.





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