Food4Rhino

A single component plugin to stream GRBL and G-code commands to your iDraw pen plotter directly from Grasshopper. As of V1.1.0 it now should support basically ANY GRBL plotter.

This website won't let me upload the example file, it is available in the github releases: https://github.com/DalessandroJ/iDraw_GH

The component takes as input:

1. A boolean input called "Run", attach a button here and click to run the component.
2. A list of GRBL and G-Code commands as strings. The iDraw "DrawCore" controller software does not recognize G2 or G3 G-code commands, send G1 commands instead. These will be streamed to your iDraw in order.
3. A folder to save the G-code file that is produced when hitting the Run button.
4. The path to your Python 3 .exe. If it doesn't work, I made it with Python 3.11 so try that.

This is what the component does when you hit run:

1. it validates your python path exists.
2. it validates your g-code folder exists, and tries to create it if it does not.
3. it finds the USB port your iDraw is connected to by querying connected devices with "$I" which GRBL devices will respond to, and parses the response for the word "DrawCore". If you have more than one iDraw connected it will just grab the first iDraw it finds.
4. it writes the g-code commands to a file in the folder you specified, named with a timestamp.
5. finally it streams the commands from the file to your iDraw.