Jeff's forwarded email "box maker plugin"

[gnarlinsky]

A project that might be a good challenge for the python user group - a program to automatically generate a press-fit box for laser cutting. Could likely be released in a way that you could solicit donations for it from makerspaces - I didn't look at the licensing.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

This is a job for a pythonist. Probably easy for an expert, quite painful for normal people.

The boxmaker plugin for inkscape:

http://www.keppel.demon.co.uk/111000/111000.html

The download is a plug in for inkscape, so we need to find the extensions folder whereever it is.

When installed, there is a new menu item, Extensions >> Laser Tools >> Tabbed Box Maker

On my system, the plug in installed but then complained that it needed the lxml wrapper for libxml2. (Message below).

This is a python library thing, i.e., need to install it in python (not inkscape). (In particular, need to install in the python that inkscape is using, in the event there are > 1 installations of python.)

I didn't succeed in installing it, and it wanted a whole bunch of other dependencies which never fully installed. Also, there may be version issues with different versions of python, I didn't get far enough to really tell.

Once the plugin is installed and working, we can look at tweaking it, that shouldn't be difficult. E.g., we'd like to make sure the lines are .001in, discover the right settings for different materials, etc.

The complaint I got:
"The fantastic lxml wrapper for libxml2 is required by inkex.py and therefore this extension. Please download and install the latest version from http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/lxml/, or install it through your package manager by a command like: sudo apt-get install python-lxml"