Workflow
How do I use terraPen?
Every step from unboxing to your first finished plot now lives in one place: the terraPen Documentation. This page is the quick version — how to get from artwork to a finished plot, and which software to use to get there.
Quick start
terraPen uses gcode to tell the machine what to plot. The easiest route is terraForge, our free app: open an SVG or PDF, position it on the bed, generate the gcode and send it to terraPen over Wi-Fi or USB, then home, zero the pen and press start, all from the same window. You can also make gcode in other software, or generate it directly from a generative program, and send the file to terraPen with terraForge. A few options are below.
To plot live from a generative program, you can stream gcode directly to the machine over USB. Streaming setups vary a lot by software, so we can't support every combination — but any of the gcode flavours below will produce a good plot.
Turning artwork into gcode
terraForge — our own software, recommended
terraForge is our own free, open-source G-code app, built specifically for terraPen: import SVG or PDF, position it on the bed, and generate optimised G-code, then connect over Wi-Fi or USB for live control. Read more on the terraForge page.
Download terraForge
Free and open source · Windows, macOS & Linux
plotterLens — artwork from your phone camera
plotterLens is our free phone app for making plottable artwork. Point your camera at something, pick from twenty drawing styles, and save an SVG sized for your paper. Then open it in terraForge to generate G-code and plot it.
Explore plotterLens
Free · runs in your phone's browser, no app store needed
PlotterFun
A simple but powerful web app that translates images to vectors, with several filters and configurable renderers.
DrawingBotV3
An open-source program, with a paid tier, that converts images into SVGs, PDFs and gcode using a variety of configurable renderers.
LightBurn
A commercial laser cutter and engraver package. It's built for lasers, not plotters, but its gcode output works well on terraPen.
vpype
An open-source Python tool that converts SVGs directly into gcode from the command line.
Full documentation
Every step in more detail — unboxing, connecting terraPen to your Wi-Fi, your first plot, YAML config reference, FAQs, and support for older machines — lives at the terraPen Documentation site. That's the place to go if you get stuck.