Vinyl Sign Cutting Software for Linux?

prpplague asks: "a large but often over looked business in the United States is that of making vinyl signs. A Windows application to do the layout and run the plotter/cutter will cost you at least $250. I've been unable to find a Unix based application that does the same thing. Anyone out there working on something to replace this business sector's dependency on Microsoft based products?"

Comments

transitt is accurate

[foniksonik]

That's exactly what the guy is looking for but open source or *nix based... anything that can do vectors would be a start and hpgl is definitely the output you want. The only other thing I can think it needs to do is control the feed of the vinyl.

I don't know of any software on Linux for this but it doesn't seem like a very difficult problem to solve.

Re:transitt is accurate

[transiit]

Firmware.

Anagraph had all of this stuff inside the plotter. Even a little HPGL interpreter on board, so we would literally just dump raw HPGL on the serial port and it would deal with it. It was up to the people over in the engineering department to worry about vinyl control or what direction the knife should be in and all that crap.

It's a bit analagous to postscript printers with their own interpreters working out all the hard parts of printing a document.

When I was working there, our usual debug method was to use the mode command in dos to set up the com port, then just do a "copy art.hpg com1" (or whatever. I know it involved mode and copy)

So now we just need stuff that's capable of doing nice vectorized art and will put out (or can be converted to) hpgl
I'd go look at gnuplot first, or xfig, or some other pre-existing app (they are out there) and I notice that imagemagick (convert) supports hpgl output.

-transiit

You have loads of options

[trevry]

How about http://www.qcad.org this will allow you to take dxf files and output to hpgl. There are a load of hpgl gpl programs out there. Try a search on http://www.freshmeat.net for hpgl.
If you are using something like a Roland printer/plotter or a Gerber Edge you're in for a bit of trouble though. They use special print profiles for colour matching and it can be hell trying to get the colours right. Mind you haven't tryed doing it in about 6 years.

Vertical Market Product.....

[jsimon12]

I think what is boils down to is the guy doesn't want to pay the 250 bucks. I can understand wanting to save money, but 250 isn't too bad, hell Photoshop is twice that and Macomedia Director is twice that still.

Another point, this sounds like "Veritcal Market" type stuff, not too many people out there in need of the software. Odds are there aren't going to be any true out of the box Open Source products to do exactly this, you could probabaly develope one on your own in no time with a couple of things people have mentioned, but then you weigh that against the 250 it would cost to buy the software and the fact that I can't imagine the majority of "sign cutters" being super computer savvy and hence not understanding Linux or compiling their own programs etc etc, so maybe it boils down to a matter of, no it doesn't exist, most of the pieces are there, so if you need it write it. If you can write it then pay the 250 bucks.

Lastly, this is a pretty retarded "Ask Slashdot", I don't mean to troll or complain, but come on dude, a search on Freshmeat and Google would get you an answer, or have you tried Usenet, might even be a comp.signcutting (you never know ;)

NIST open source CNC

[Farnsworth0110]

You might try seaching the NIST.gov site. They had a large program to support the developemtnt of open souce CNC software.