A later change was the addition of an electrically controlled clamp to hold the pens, which allowed them to be changed, and thus create multi-colored output.

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Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather.

In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting plotter.

Smaller desktop plotters were often used for business graphics.

Printers with graphics capabilities took away some of the market by the early 1980s, and the introduction of laser printers in the mid-1980s largely eliminated the use of plotters from most roles.

Pen plotters can draw complex line art, including text, but do so slowly because of the mechanical movement of the pens.

They are often incapable of efficiently creating a solid region of color, but can hatch an area by drawing a number of close, regular lines.

Such devices may still understand vector languages originally designed for plotter use, because in many uses, they offer a more efficient alternative to raster data.

They were faster than pen plotters and were available in large formats, suitable for reproducing engineering drawings.

The quality of image was often not as good as contemporary pen plotters.

Electrostatic plotters were made in both flat-bed and drum types.

The electrostatic plotter uses the pixel as a drawing means, like a raster graphics display device.

The plotter head consists of a large number of tiny styluses (as many as 21760) embedded in it.

This head traverses over the width of the paper as it rolls past the head to make a drawing.

Electrostatic plotters are very fast with plotting speed of 6 to 32 mms, depending on the plotter resolution.

The cutting plotter is connected to a computer, which is equipped with cutting design or drawing computer software programs.

Those computer software programs are responsible for sending the necessary cutting dimensions or designs in order to command the cutting knife to produce the correct project cutting needs.

Such tools allow desired card and decal shapes to be cut out very precisely, and repeatably.

Three common ASCII -based plotter control languages are Hewlett-Packard s HP-GL, its successor HP-GL2, and Houston Instruments DMPL.

These would establish scaling factors from world coordinates to device coordinates, and translate to the low level device commands.

For example, to plot XX in HP 9830 BASIC, the program would be.

The paper was supplied in roll form and had perforations along both edges that were engaged by sprockets on the rollers.

This had the disadvantage of being somewhat slow to move, as well as requiring floor space equal to the size of the paper, but could double as a digitizer.

Plotter Drawing Software