Inkscape and WaterColorBot

Introduction

There are three main software interfaces for driving the WaterColorBot: RoboPaint, RoboPaint RT, and the WaterColorBot extensions for Inkscape. This page is about the latter.

Inkscape is a superb, free vector graphics editor, for which we have written an extension (a plugin) to control the WaterColorBot. Our extension provides a fine grain level of control over exactly what will be painted, but more-or-less requires that you create the artwork within Inkscape to take full advantage of the features. The most important thing to know is that the Inkscape extension will paint all of the paths (lines) within your drawing. It will not automatically fill in any regions; any region that you wish to fill with paint will have to have (for example) a hatch fill that consists of lines, in order for the area to be colored in.

Inkscape is also capable of importing artwork in PDF format (as well as tracing bitmap graphics to some extent), and saving as SVG graphics that can be used with RoboPaint. Users who have experience with the Eggbot (and its Inkscape based driver) may wish to start with this application, before trying the others.

Getting the software

Installing Inkscape:

• Begin by downloading and installing the latest version of Inkscape, version 0.48.2 or newer. You can find Inkscape here.
• If you are using a Mac (MacOS version 10.6-10.8: Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion), download and install the latest release of XQuartz

Installing the extensions:

• Easy installers for Windows and Mac coming week of November 10, 2013.
• Until then, you can download the software from our github repository and install it manually.

Special information for Eggbot users

The WaterColorBot Control extension is based on our Eggbot Control extension that operates the Eggbot. If you have had some experience with the Eggbot, you will find most controls to be the same. In particular, you may have had some experience with making a multi-color drawing with the Eggbot, by putting paths that you want to print in different colors on different layers.

The biggest difference between the two machines is that since the WaterColorBot can perform automatic paint color changes-- unlike the Eggbot --it requires that you use multiple named layers when multicolor painting is enabled.

The WaterColorBot Template / Making a new document

A WaterColorBot template is included with the software installation. To create a new document pre-formatted for the WaterColorBot, select from the menu: File > New > WaterColorBot.

The template is pre-sized at 11" wide x 8" tall, matching the printable area of the WaterColorBot (that is, for a sheet of 9x12 paper, without the margins shown). The template also comes ready to use with 9 empty layers that are intended to represent the 8 colors plus water wash.

Default paint layers

In accordance with the way that the Control WaterColorBot extension works, the layers have names like "4-Yellow" and "1-Black" that represent both a paint position (4 and 1, respectively in those two cases) and the human-readable paint color (Yellow and Black, respectively in those two cases).

While layers can easily be re-ordered, the default stackup of the layers is in approximate order of darkness, with 4-Yellow at the bottom (meaning that it will be printed first) and 1-Black is near the top (meaning that it will be printed near the end).

If you are using a painting mode that does not automatically change paint colors (e.g., pen/pencil mode), you can ignore the layer structure, and put your painting on any layer or combination of layers that you desire.

Extensions

There are three Inkscape extensions installed as part of the WaterColorBot distribution.

Control WaterColorBot

Control WaterColorBot is the primary Inkscape extension for WaterColorBot, and of the three, is the one that actually talks to and drives the WaterColorBot.

Hatch Fill

The Hatch Fill extension (originally developed for the Eggbot project) is included in the WaterColorBot submenu, below Control WaterColorBot. This version has been slightly modified to have calibration in terms of lines per inch, rather than pixel steps.

Snap Colors to Layers (beta)

This new extension (still in beta test) can automatically assign colored paths to layers, making it possible for the WaterColorBot to semi-automatically paint them.