DrawBot Practice Tip: A Watched Pot

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my DrawBot.  In large part that’s because it’s been a while since I’ve even used my DrawBot.

After a little dry spell of making, I’ve been rocking the DrawBot.  Previously I had been drawing things about the size of a sheet of paper.  While this meant the drawings were relatively quick, it also meant I could just print whatever I wanted directly onto a 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper using my traditional black and white laser printer.  This weekend I’ve cranked out a few drawings – but on a much grander scale.  Several months ago I picked up a large roll of white paper at the local office supply store – and I’ve since created about three 3-foot tall drawings.  One is a House Stark direwolf from Game of Thrones, one is an R2D2 commissioned by my daughter, and a third is an R2D2 and C3PO also at the request for my daughter.¹

The last one is particularly cool.  I’ll take a picture for you later.  There’s a lot of room for improvement with the gondola.  The current setup is… let’s say… non-optimal.  I’m working on an improved version.

Where was I?  Oh yes!  The watched pot!

I’m using Sandy Noble’s seriously awesome Polargraph software to power my DrawBot.  I’m rocking version 0.18² and noticed that when I’ve got the program on the “Input” tab it draws about 42 points a minute and when it’s on the “Queue” tab it draws about 96 points a minute when working on SVG / vector graphic.  The cool part about drawing with the “Input” tab open is that you can see the drawing in progress.  So, when I’m watching the drawing, it runs slower.

1. She likes R2D2. [↩]
2. He’s continually working on the software and is already out with v.0.19! [↩]