loom big

On the bottom left is the Weave Plan and it is a simple matter to click the mouse to fill a square and click again to clear a square and build up any pattern. The pattern can extend to the right and can then scroll to many hundres of columns. Above this are the crosses of the Draft. Shown is an optimised Draft that my program has calculated as the most efficient for the 24-shaft loom. A straight Draft can be chosen too but limits the complexity of the pattern. Bottom right is the Lifting Plan, which is also auto generated by the program. It is the Lifting Plan that indicates which shafts of the loom will lift to generate the pattern in the editor. By just drawing the Weave Plan, Draft and Lifting Plan auto-generate. All that remains is for the loom to be turned on and this software will send the data required for automatic cloth generation.

The top right panel is the control centre where such things as printing a test swatch, copy and paste between buffers, and etc. can be performed. Obviously, load and save are supported to disc and pattern libraries can be built up for future use. As a matter of interest, the PCs of that era only had eight colours to choose from!

Loom with pattern