Pen plotters/Plotting in Inkscape

This page contains instructions, tips, notes, and troubleshooting support for using pen plotters with Inkscape. Please, refer to the dedicated page for an introduction to pen plotters.

Inkscape can either save HPGL files or directly connect to a pen plotter. The following instructions have been tested and are valid for Inkscape v1.4.2.

Save HPGL files

Example settings of a A3 landscape .hpgl file. However, the resolution is something you need to figure out for each plotter. Also, each plotter places the center point differently, sometimes really in the middle, sometimes in the bottom right corner. So it depends if you should enable this here or not… To be figured out :).

1. Create a vector file
2. Save it as a HPGL file. See the image on the right for the settings. For example: A3 landscape
   • Note: A landscape document is plotted in portrait orientation on the plotter. (It’s weird but it works)

Plot directly from Inkscape

These default settings should work. Otherwise, try to edit them

The plot functionality is under: Extensions → Export → Plot

Error: pySerial is not installed.

Note that, at the time of writing, the following solution works only if Inkscape is not installed via Flatpak.

Please follow these steps:

1. Download and extract (unzip) this file to your local harddisk: https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pyserial/pyserial-2.7.tar.gz
2. Copy the "serial" folder (Can be found inside the just extracted folder) into the following Inkscape folder: /usr/????????
3. Close and restart Inkscape

Documentation to write

• How to determine if Centre origin should be checked or not
• Plotting orientation and sizes
• Resizing, reframing and trimming of a plotted vector