Make A Draft for the TC2
Follow along with this example in AdaCAD 4: Drafting for Jacquard, Lesson 1
AdaCAD an be a bit strange for those used to Photoshop and the Woven Pixel because instead of making a blank canvas and filling it with our structures, you start from the structures and "grow" them into the size of the canvas/loom that you are working with. In this tutorial, we do this by using the twill, rectangle and selvedge functions. After designing out draft, we'll export it as a bitmap image and reformat it so that it works with the TC2's interface.
In this file, we show a sample workflow for quickly producing a repeating pattern of a twill to weave. We generate a twill via a Twill operation (top) before connecting it to a Rectangle operation. The rectangle operation repeats the twill across a user specified number of picks and ends. Here, we have selected 1200 ends and 14 picks. 1200 because our loom is 1230 ends wide (and we will add 30 ends of selvedges), and 14 because the twill we created will repeat every 14 picks. We take the output of the rectangle operation and connect it to the selvedge operation to add a user-specified number of ends of selvedge to the design. We connect the outlet of our rectangle draft to the "draft" inlet to specify this as the body of our cloth. The selvedge operation also takes a second draft into the "selvedge" inlet that it will use as a repeating structure within the selvedge regions. Here, we use a tabby operation as the selvedge structure and specify that we want 15 ends of selvedge on each side of the cloth. The generated draft reflects these parameters and when we look at the size of the design, it is 1230 x 14, which is the size of our loom x the size of the repeat for this structure. Note: AdaCAD beta will repeat the base cloth and/or selvedge structures so they repeat at even intervals.
There are many other workflows that can make valid drafts for the TC2. For picture weaving, explore the image map operation. For sampling multiple structures you can explore join top, join left, and variable width sampler to arrange multiple drafts into drafts for the TC2.
Video Example (made in a previous version of AdaCAD)
Upload to your TC2
When you are ready to upload and weave on a TC2, follow the instructions at Getting Started -> Weave AdaCAD Drafts on the TC2
More information: The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard and Dobby Looms Using Photoshop® Schlein, Alice, and Ziek, Bhakti Bridgewater Press 2006