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evil-mad / axidraw

Software for the AxiDraw drawing machine
GNU General Public License v2.0
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How to switch between plot and interactive mode? #125

Closed clemense closed 2 years ago

clemense commented 2 years ago

I would like to switch back and forth between plot and interactive mode. Unfortunately, this

from pyaxidraw import axidraw 
ad = axidraw.AxiDraw()
ad.interactive()
connected = ad.connect()
if not connected:
    exit()
ad.move(0.2, 0)
ad.plot_setup('blabla.svg')
ad.plot_run()
ad.interactive()
ad.move(0.2, 0)
ad.disconnect()

doesn't work and no failure message or exception is thrown. And none of the examples shows this use case. How can I achieve this?

Thanks!

oskay commented 2 years ago

As it says in the docs, you must close the connection to the AxiDraw at the end of your interactive context session, using disconnect().

If you do not, then you are entering into undefined behavior, which will not necessarily work nor will it necessarily produce error messages, nor will it necessarily fail gracefully. So, close the Interactive session before starting a Plot session.

You also need to open a new Interactive session before second move() command.

As an aside, the "manual walk" commands are probably better suited to this application, if the goal is to reposition the carriage -- offsetting it from Home -- before starting subsequent plots and/or moving Home after.