Txt2plotter – True centerline vectors from Flux.2 for pen plotters
I’ve been working on a project to bridge the gap between AI generation and my AxiDraw, and I think I finally have a workflow that avoids the usual headaches. If you’ve tried plotting AI-generated images, you probably know the struggle: generic tracing tools (like Potrace) trace the outline of a line, resulting in double-strokes that ruin the look and take twice as long to plot. What I tried previously: - Potrace / Inkscape Trace: Great for filled shapes, but results in "hollow" lines for line art. - Canny Edge Detection: Often too messy; it picks up noise and creates jittery paths. -…
In plain words
Txt2plotter converts AI-generated images into clean vector files optimized for pen plotters like the AxiDraw. It addresses a common problem where standard tracing tools create double-stroked lines unsuitable for plotting. The tool uses Flux.2 to generate true centerline vectors instead of outlines, avoiding the messy results of edge detection or generic vectorization software. It's designed for makers and artists who want to plot AI-generated artwork without compromised line quality.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
I’ve been working on a project to bridge the gap between AI generation and my AxiDraw, and I think I finally have a workflow that avoids the usual headaches. If you’ve tried plotting AI-generated images, you probably know the struggle: generic tracing tools (like Potrace) trace the outline of a line, resulting in double-strokes that ruin the look and take twice as long to plot. What I tried previously: - Potrace / Inkscape Trace: Great for filled shapes, but results in "hollow" lines for line art. - Canny Edge Detection: Often too messy; it picks up noise and creates jittery paths. - Standard SDXL: Struggled with geometric coherence, often breaking lines or hallucinating perspective. - A bunch of projects that claimed to be txt2svg but which produced extremely poor results, at least for pen plotting. (Chat2SVG, StarVector, OmniSVG, DeepSVG, SVG-VAE, VectorFusion, DiffSketcher, SVGDreamer, SVGDreamer++, NeuralSVG, SVGFusion, VectorWeaver, SwiftSketch, CLIPasso, CLIPDraw, InternSVG) My Approach: I ended up writing a Python tool that combines a few specific technologies to get a true "centerline" vector: 1. Prompt Engineering: An LLM rewrites the prompt to enforce a "Technical Drawing" style optimized for the generator. 2. Generation: I'm using Flux.2-dev (4-bit). It seems significantly better than SDXL at maintaining straight lines and coherent geometry. 3. Skeletonization: This is the key part. Instead of tracing contours, I use Lee’s Method (via scikit-image) to erode the image down to a 1-pixel wide skeleton. This recovers the actual stroke path. 4. Graph Conversion: The pixel skeleton is converted into a graph to identify nodes and edges, pruning out small artifacts/noise. 5. Optimization: Finally, I feed it into vpype to merge segments and sort the paths (TSP) so the plotter isn't jumping around constantly. You can see the results in the examples inside the Github repo. The project is currently quite barebones, but it produces better results than other options I've tested so I'm publishing it. I'm interested in implementing better pre/post processing, API-based generation, and identifying shapes for cross-hatching.
More ai this month
the category →
I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.
AI · 17d ago · simedw.com
Astute▲585Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators
AI · 18d ago · company-app.joinastute.com
Hey HN, Henry from Cactus here! We previously released Cactus Needle, a 14MB agentic LLM for tool call, device use, and structured extraction for phones, wearables, smart homes, small robots and microcontrollers. We got really great feedback here, and have now incorporated the suggestions to release Needle 2. The whole model is a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in 28MB of RAM; 45m parameters at 2bit compression. Needle hits 500 tokens/sec decode speed on a Raspberry Pi 5, sits between 400-1,500 tokens/sec on VR devices like Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and ranges…
AI · 26d ago · cactuscompute.com
Launched alongside, January 2026
the whole month →- IN
Hey HN! I wanted to share something I built over the last few weeks: isometric.nyc is a massive isometric pixel art map of NYC, built with nano banana and coding agents. I didn't write a single line of code. Of course no-code doesn't mean no-engineering. This project took a lot more manual labor than I'd hoped! I wrote a deep dive on the workflow and some thoughts about the future of AI coding and creativity: http://cannoneyed.com/projects/isometric-nyc
AI · Jan 2026 · cannoneyed.com
Automatic AI-powered code reviews the moment you open a PR
Dev tools · Jan 2026 · kilo.ai
