Generative art, made to plot.

The full app with no time limit. You can open and explore all 50 patterns and tools, and save documents for every pattern. Exporting is available for Trochoid-only documents in trial mode; a license unlocks export for every pattern.

50 patterns, grouped into 8 families: Curves, Shapes, Points, Multi-line, Tilings, Grids & Packing, Generative Systems, and Simulation. Many patterns also include several built-in Types — each a distinctly different design — multiplying the number of variations several times over. Each pattern ships with curated presets, and fine-grained sliders make the practical variety effectively unlimited.

Design mode gives you high-level controls; Formula mode exposes the underlying mathematical parameters for full control. Simpler patterns show a single set of controls.

Yes — every pattern includes curated presets, plus shuffle and reset controls.

Any plotter that accepts SVG. GD Studio exports one labeled group per layer (Inkscape / axicli convention), so axicli, vpype, and Inkscape's plotter extensions can route each layer to its own pen. AxiDraw-class plotters are also supported directly via Plotter Hub.

Put each pen's content on its own layer — each layer carries its own pen color, stroke width, and dash, and exports as a separate group. To split one pattern across pens, use the Split section of the Pattern tab (by path length, tile orientation, spiral arm, contour level, and more).

SVG, PDF, and direct printing, plus sending straight to a plotter over your local network with Plotter Hub.

Hidden layers are excluded, the page background isn't plotted (it's written as a CSS background that viewers show but plotters ignore — PDF export bakes it in), and the viewport is the drawable area, so anything outside the margins is clipped.

Yes. Add a Map layer and pick a scale: search for a city or area to get street-level detail, or choose a country, continent, or the whole world. Every feature is an independent toggle — motorways down to footpaths, railways, rivers, coastline, water, parks, buildings, and boundaries — so you compose exactly the map you want.

Street-level detail comes from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL); country, continent, and world scales use Natural Earth's public-domain cartography. A first fetch needs an internet connection, and because OpenStreetMap's Overpass service is a free public one, very large areas can take a while. The geometry is then stored inside your document, so a saved map reopens offline and plots identically every time — it's captured, not re-fetched.

Yes — import GPX tracks (a run, a ride, a race route) and they're drawn on top of the map. Import several at once, either merged into one layer or split into one layer per route.

Yes — Split by Map Feature puts each feature class (roads, water, parks…) or each GPX route on its own layer with its own pen, ready for a multi-pen plot. Each layer starts from a cartographic default — water, for example, in blue with a parallel-line fill — and every pen, color, and fill is yours to change from there. Closed areas are hatched rather than flooded, since a pen can't fill.

Yes — street and area names can be turned into editable Text layers, grouped by category. Each label becomes its own text item you can move, resize, or rename on the canvas.

Yes. Add an Image layer, drop in a photo (from a file or your Photos library), and pick a conversion style. GD Studio reads the picture's light and dark and rebuilds it from continuous pen strokes and single pen-taps — never a flat ink fill — so the preview matches exactly what the pen draws. Brightness and Contrast sliders shape how the subject reads. Eight styles are available: Stipple, Halftone, Hatch, Contour, Outline, Sketch, Squiggle, and ASCII.

Yes — a color split separates the photo into one pen layer per color (faithful Natural, punchy Vivid, or Tonal light-to-dark), so you can swap pens and build up a true multi-color plot. It works with every style.

Yes — text is rendered as true plotter strokes, using single-stroke and outline fonts.

Yes — add your own custom SVG fonts in Settings and use them in any text layer.

Yes. Add an SVG layer and its lines become the layer's path; you can then restyle those lines with any pen and render style, mask them, or transform them like any other layer.

A crosshair for pen registration and plotter calibration.

Yes — choose millimeters, centimeters, or inches in Settings. Every length input across the app follows your choice. It's a display preference only; documents always store dimensions in millimeters, so switching units never changes how a saved drawing measures on paper.

Yes. In Settings you can manage the paper-size list — including adding your own custom sizes — and set the defaults a new document inherits: paper size, orientation, background color, and margins. You can do the same for stroke defaults (line width) and for fonts, including importing custom SVG fonts and choosing the default font and height.

Yes. A render-resolution setting controls how closely each curve is followed when it's flattened into plotter segments — from ultra-fine (0.025 mm) for tiny details to draft (0.5 mm) for quick proofs. Lower values give smoother strokes at the cost of larger files and slower exports.

No. It runs entirely on your Mac. The only network traffic is opt-in: sending to a Plotter Hub server you configured (usually a Raspberry Pi on your own network), fetching map data if you add a Map layer (the area you ask for goes to the public OpenStreetMap and Natural Earth services — you can point this at your own map servers instead), and, if enabled, checking for app updates. Documents, layer content, and pattern parameters never leave your machine.