InkSim
InkSim is a standalone embroidery simulator and preview renderer. It opens embroidery files, shows the stitch sequence, and lets you inspect or replay a design before production.
It is a normal Python desktop application installed from PyPI — not an Inkscape extension.
The viewer includes an OpenGL textured renderer that draws stitches as
realistic ribbon quads with normal-mapped thread and Blinn-Phong lighting. Press
Z in the viewer to toggle between the CPU and GPU renderers. The GPU renderer
requires OpenGL 3.3; older systems fall back to the
CPU raster renderer automatically.
Detail of the normal-mapped thread texture used by the OpenGL renderer.
Install
uv tool install inksim
Requires Python 3.11+. See the installation guide for
uv setup and alternative installers.
Run
inksim
inksim design.pes
inksim design.pes --play
On Windows, inksim-gui design.pes starts without a console window.
Documentation
- Documentation index
- Installation and running
- User guide
- Rendering modes and overlays
- Inkscape / Ink/Stitch workflow
- Application interconnect
- Developer guide
- Contributing
Background
The idea behind this tool dates back to 2013 with an experimental C++/Qt project called Orca, which originally explored graph algorithms for Inkscape on Linux before turning into a digitizer and stitch viewer. Here is an old recording of that early prototype in action:
InkSim is a fresh, standalone rewrite of that viewer concept -- built from scratch using Python, PySide6, and Numba. The main goal is to provide a fast, lightweight way to preview embroidery files without heavy overhead.
It was built to fill a small workflow gap, and it's shared with the hope that others in the Inkscape and Ink/Stitch community might find it helpful as well.
Special thanks to the Ink/Stitch team and community for keeping open-source embroidery alive and inspiring.
License
InkSim is released under the GNU General Public License v3 or later.
1 maintainer
Metadata
1 maintainer
Release files for inksim 0.5.6
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| inksim-0.5.6.tar.gz | 603.1 kB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| inksim-0.5.6-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 1.3 MB
Release files / inksim-0.5.6.tar.gz
| Download URL | inksim-0.5.6.tar.gz |
|---|---|
| Size | 603.1 kB |
| Tags | Source |
|
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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|
|
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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| Upload date | |
|
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing? |
No |
| Uploaded via |
twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.14.5
|
Release files / inksim-0.5.6-py3-none-any.whl
| Download URL | inksim-0.5.6-py3-none-any.whl |
|---|---|
| Size | 744.8 kB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
|
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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|
|
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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|
| Upload date | |
|
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing? |
No |
| Uploaded via |
twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.14.5
|
