Hey guys and gals,
I just wanted to let you know that I got my drawing machine up and running. Thank you for all of your help. I'm still learning the basics and just getting familiar with how the program works and all that.

I was wondering, do you know how the sample drawings that are on the code site were created? I really like the Nautilus drawing and would like to be able to create drawings myself that draw out on the machine just as nice.

Was that drawing created via Illustrator? I'm looking for some ideas on how to create simple and clean drawings like the Nautilus. Possibly do a Mandala or something of that nature.

I tried doing the fractal tree and it didn't look so good. I think it was because I scaled the drawing up to about 200%, and my pixel was set to like .8. I'm using a .3 pen, so the drawing didn't turn out that well.

I just completed the Nautilus and it looks great. My only complaint is that the drawing machine wanted to draw lines that went off my paper. I had to manually stop it, so it didn't write on my board. Is the software supposed to detect out of bounds and not draw coordinates outside the page size?

I can see my page within the software, and I can see the lines extending off the page. The drawing machine still tried to draw them anyway.

Tomorrow I'll try an actual picture (like your Marilyn Monroe). Do you recommend that I convert the picture I want to do, into black and white first?

I just noticed,

When I import the commands for the Nautilus, is that more like a vector drawing? And the fractal tree was imported as an image...is that why there are all those empty pixels?

I guess I'm trying to understand why the nautilus has direct lines drawn, and the fractal tree has lines drawn in empty space, where there were no lines in the original drawing.

Hey Bob, glad to see you've got things working. It's exactly as you suspected, the nautilus and the fractal tree are both meant to be drawn as vector graphics rather than bitmaps. Basically two very different ways of drawing images. More commands is _different_ rather that being better or worse.

When you drew your fractal tree you loaded fractal_tree.jpg, and drew that as a bitmap, which is why it came out a bit odd. And when you loaded the pre-generated commands (fractal_tree_cmds.txt) that's how it should've been. I guess you could see that in the preview on the input tab. (the preview draws the lines that are currently loaded in the queue.)

Now, these cmds files where created by Andy Kinsman from postscript files, which is usable as a generative programming language in it's own right. He made this cool little interpreter (PS To PolarV1.5 - in http://code.google.com/p/polargraph/downloads/list) that can be used to convert postscript files (*.ps) into drawing commands that the machine understands. They are really good for these kinds of recursive, generated drawings, and it's actually a pretty powerful tool. It's the whole reason you have good vector graphics on the polargraph at all since he encouraged me (and let me nick his code ha!). He helpfully wrote this guide to using it too: http://code.google.com/p/polargraph/wiki/PostScriptForPolargraph

The problem with using these pre-made command lists is that they only really fit a specific sized machine, which is why your nautilus didn't quite fit on your particular machine. There's currently no way to transform or translate a pre-saved command queue. But you can load a new vector graphic file and draw that from scratch. It needs to be in SVG format, and at the moment, you can't move it or scale it (easily), so it's a bit tricky, but I'm working on that.

Hope that sheds some light!
Sandy Noble

I think I get it, it looks like the *.bat files are just run GhostScript and pass it the *.ps file listed inside of it.

So using one of the .bat files as a template, I can create a new bat file and replace string_art.ps with the name of my new *.ps file. That sounds easy enough.

So my next obvious question is....
When I open some of the generated CMD files in polargraphcontroller.exe, they don't line up with my paper (same problem I had with the Nautilus in my initial post here).
So, to 'move' the image onto my paper, does that need to be done via the original PostScript code, or is there a command or setting that I set in PS to Polar Graph for my page size.

From my understanding, I need to edit some stuff in PS2POLAR.PS file. I'm currently drawing in landscape mode, so I guess I need to change that to true?
I'll measure my pulleys and put that in too

Also, can you explain how the pen up/down works? Does PS2POLAR lift the pen up and down between shapes if you are using a servo? Or is that just for the very end of the drawing or something?

So much to explore and not much time to play with it! Thanks again, this is opening a lot of doors with the PostScript features