# GD Studio — Generative art, made to plot.

Design generative line art for pen plotters on your Mac: pick a pattern, shape it with live controls, layer in text, SVG, and photos, then export a plotter-ready file — or plot straight from the canvas.

## At a glance

- **Platform:** macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel)
- **Core capability:** Design generative line art for pen plotters — 50 patterns, live parametric controls, layers, and plotter-ready export
- **Honest preview:** Every design is built from continuous strokes, so the canvas is an exact preview of the pen's path — what you see is what the pen draws
- **Best for:** generative artists, designers and makers, educators, and anyone curious about pen-plotter art

## What GD Studio does

GD Studio — short for Generative Drawing Studio — turns mathematical patterns into designs your pen plotter can draw, without writing a line of code. Choose from 50 patterns across 8 families, shape them with live controls, layer in text and imported SVG, turn a photo into plottable line art, and export plotter-ready **SVG**, **PDF**, or **print** — or plot straight from the canvas with **Plotter Hub**.

## Key features

### Dozens of patterns, endless variations
- **50 patterns across 8 families:** Curves, Shapes, Points, Multi-line, Tilings, Grids & Packing, Generative Systems, and Simulation — from classic Trochoids and Harmonographs to tilings, packings, mazes, flow fields, and differential growth.
- Many patterns include several built-in **Types**, each a distinctly different design, multiplying the variations several times over.
- Start from curated **presets**, then make each design your own: adjust parameters, change how it's drawn, apply modifiers, split it across colors, or combine multiple patterns in layered compositions.
- **Shuffle** and **reset** controls for quick exploration.

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

### Layers, pens, and multi-pen plotting
- Build each drawing as a stack of **layers**, with independent pen color, stroke width, dash, transform, and render style.
- Assign each pen to its own layer, or **split a single pattern across several pens** by path length, tile orientation, spiral arm, contour level, and other pattern-specific properties.
- Each layer exports as its own labeled SVG group, so plotter tools can guide pen changes between groups.

### Line, Fill, and Repeat modifiers
- Restyle any line with **wobble, hatch, stipple, nested outlines**, and more.
- The same modifiers apply to patterns, text, and imported SVG alike.

### More than patterns: image, text, SVG, and calibration layers
- **Image layer** — Drop in a photo and it's redrawn as plottable line art, rebuilt from continuous pen strokes and single pen-taps (never a flat ink fill), with **eight styles**: Stipple, Halftone, Hatch, Contour, Outline, Sketch, Squiggle, and ASCII. Brightness and Contrast sliders shape how the subject reads.
- **Color split** — Separate a photo into one pen layer per color (**Natural**, **Vivid**, or **Tonal**) for a true multi-color plot. Works with every style.
- **Text layer** — Rendered as true plotter strokes using single-stroke and outline fonts, plus your own custom SVG fonts.
- **SVG layer** — Import an SVG file to bring existing line art into your design; its lines become a regular layer you can restyle, mask, and transform.
- **Calibration layer** — A crosshair for pen registration and plotter calibration.

### From canvas to pen on paper
- Export to **SVG** (Inkscape / axicli layer-group convention), **PDF**, or **print directly** — each pen layer is written as its own labeled group, ready for any SVG-capable plotter workflow (axicli, vpype, Inkscape plotter extensions).
- Or skip the file step and plot straight from GD Studio with **Plotter Hub**: a free, open-source app you can install on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W or 3B+ to run an AxiDraw-compatible plotter over WiFi. Plotter Hub optimizes the SVG and automatically pauses between layers so you can change pens for each color.

### Units, defaults, and output resolution
- Work in **millimeters, centimeters, or inches** — a display preference only; documents always store dimensions in millimeters.
- Manage the paper-size list (including custom sizes) and set the defaults a new document inherits: paper size, orientation, background color, margins, stroke width, and fonts.
- A **render-resolution** setting controls how closely each curve is followed when flattened into plotter segments — from ultra-fine (0.025 mm) for tiny details to draft (0.5 mm) for quick proofs.

### Privacy
- Runs entirely on your Mac. The only network traffic is opt-in: sending to a Plotter Hub server you configured, and, if enabled, checking for app updates. Documents, layer content, and pattern parameters never leave your machine.

### App languages
The user interface is available in 10 languages: English, Dutch, German, Japanese, French, Chinese (Simplified), Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Korean.

## Pricing & licensing

- **€ 24,99** / **$ 29.99**
- **VAT included** (except US & CA)
- **Free trial, no time limit:** Explore all 50 patterns and save designs for every pattern. Export, print, and plot are free for Trochoid designs; a license unlocks these for every pattern.
- **Single payment. No recurring fees.**
- **License:** Single user, multiple Macs
- **Payments:** Secure checkout via **FastSpring** (MoR)
- **Distribution:** Direct download (not via the Mac App Store)

## System requirements

- **macOS:** 15 (Sequoia) or later

## Links

- **Product page:** https://www.synendo.com/gdstudio/
- **How it works:** https://www.synendo.com/gdstudio/#workflow
- **Gallery:** https://www.synendo.com/gdstudio/#gallery
- **FAQ:** https://www.synendo.com/gdstudio/#faq
- **Plotter Hub:** https://www.synendo.com/plotterhub/
