====== graphtec inkcut configuration ======



Memory of the install and configuration of a Graphtec Silhouette [[https://graphtecgb.co/product/silhouette-portrait-3/|Portrait]] vinyl cutter using [[http://inkcut.sourceforge.net/|inkcut]] under Ubuntu 15.10.


===== Requirements =====


===== Prior installs =====

  *  Inkscape
  *  pygtk and gtk
  *  python-serial
  *  python-cups
  *  librsvg2-common


===== Things to know =====

Graphtec has some specific software for their cutters, I never used it, supposedly it only works under Mac or Windows, so it was no use for me. I design most of my graphic stuff with Inkscape, so having a plugin that controls the cutter straight from Inkscape was my goal. It ought to be possible to do it under Linux OS, too.
Normally, cutters use a protocol that is called HPGL, but Graphtec uses his own, which is GPGL. Luckily, some clever guys worked out a way to generate GPGL commands from Inkcut.
I'm a lazy guy thant knows very little about installing and configuring things, so you will surely find many missing info,mistakes and nonsenses in this documentation, feel free to curse and facepalm! ;)


===== Steps followed =====

  *  After installing all the dependencies, we downloaded inkcut from [[http://sourceforge.net/p/inkcut/feature-requests/_discuss/thread/6b486dc9/dc1d/attachment/InkCut-1.0.tar.gz|here]], first try I think I downloaded from the original site and it didn't have support for GPGL (I'm almost 50% sure about this).
  *  I uncompressed the tar.gz and copied its contents to home/user/.config/inkscape/extensions. 
  *  Maybe this was only my problem, but the owner of the files was root, so I switched it to myUser with:
  
  sudo chown -R myUser:myUser Inkcut-1.0

  *  With this, Inkcut appeared in Inkscape on the extensions menu, but we had to do some other things.
  *  Add the Silhouette Portrait in "printers".
  *  In Inkcut, select "GPGL plotters (Graphtec)", under "Properties" select interface>printer, name>silhouette portrait.
  *  Sometimes, when I draw a path on Inkscape, it misses to cut the last segment (you can watch it on the preview window). Normally it fixes simply selecting the path and applying "path>union".

That's it! this kind of led me to have a Graphtec cutter working... hope it helps a bit, maybe sometime I'll include some screenshots...