Weaving Tool

Draft cloth structures forward or backward.

Open the main drafter to build threading, tie-up, treadling, color, and drawdown directly, or use the inverse drafter to sketch a target drawdown first and generate draft options from it.

Open Drafter Open Inverse Drafter

Draft Layout

Structure of a draft.

  • Threading: which shaft each warp end is threaded through, plus its warp color.
  • Tie-up: which shafts lift when a treadle is pressed.
  • Treadling: the order of treadles across picks, plus the weft color for that pick.
  • Drawdown: the woven result calculated from structure and color together.
Watch Draft Animation

See how threading, tie-up, and treadling work together as each pick becomes cloth.

Using The Drafter

Build a draft directly.

The main drafter is for composing a weaving draft section by section, adjusting colors and yarn weights, and seeing the drawdown update immediately.

1

Set the frame of the draft

Choose the draft name, then set shafts, treadles, warp ends, and picks from the toolbar. The editor tries to preserve existing work as those counts change.

2

Build the structure

Click the threading to assign each warp end to a shaft, fill the tie-up to decide which shafts lift together, and click treadling cells to place treadles on each pick.

3

Add yarns, color, and weight

Use the yarn controls to add colors, edit their hex values, and set yarn thickness. Select a yarn, then paint threading and treadling cells to assign warp and weft colors.

4

Edit without rebuilding

Use the small + and - controls around the grid to insert or remove warp ends and picks while keeping surrounding data in place. Zoom changes the draft cell size without changing the page layout.

5

Switch the drawdown view

Use Structure for black-and-white interlacement, Color for the colored drawdown, and Interlacement for the shaded thread-style preview directly in the draft panel.

6

Save, reopen, and recover

Save writes a .wdd (Weaving Draft Document) file, Open can reopen either .wdd drafts or generated .wdi (Weaving Draft Inverse) drafts, and To Inverse sends the current draft straight into a new inverse-drafter tab. The page also keeps local autosave plus undo and redo history while you work.

Using The Inverse Drafter

Start from a target cloth.

The inverse drafter lets you sketch the drawdown you want first, then search for draft structures that approximate or exactly reproduce it under chosen constraints.

1

Start from a target

Paint the target drawdown directly, or open a saved .wdi inverse draft. You can also open a .wdd forward draft and the inverse tool will use that draft’s drawdown as the new target.

2

Resize and edit the target

Change warp ends and picks from the toolbar, use the target’s insert and delete controls to grow or trim rows and columns, and zoom the target if you need a closer editing view.

3

Tune the optimizer

The optimizer panel sets the structural limits the solver is allowed to use: engine, max shafts, max treadles, max pressed treadles, float tolerance, and whether tolerance should affect the optimization itself.

4

Read stress and difference overlays

Use Show Float Stress to highlight long floats and Show Diff to outline where the current generated draft differs from the target, which helps explain why some options are better than others.

5

Compare generated options

The option buttons between the panels are sorted by the currently selected optimizer settings and engine. Option 1 is always the best current result, and switching engines can change which structure rises to the top.

6

Continue into the main drafter

Save the inverse draft as .wdi to keep the target and optimizer state, or use To Drafter to open the currently selected generated draft immediately in a new main-drafter tab. Opening that same file in the main drafter also loads the selected generated draft so you can continue coloring and refining it there.

FAQ

Common questions.

A few quick answers for the most common points of confusion when moving between the forward drafter and the inverse drafter.

The main drafter starts from structure: you build threading, tie-up, treadling, yarn color, and yarn thickness directly. The inverse drafter starts from the drawdown you want to see, then searches for draft structures that fit that target under the optimizer limits you set.

Use .wdd for the main drafter and .wdi for the inverse drafter. The tools can also hand work across directly with To Inverse and To Drafter, or cross-open those formats: opening a .wdi in the main drafter loads the currently selected generated draft, and opening a .wdd in the inverse drafter uses its drawdown as a target.

Many targets can be approximated in more than one reasonable way, especially when the shaft, treadle, or float limits are tight. The inverse drafter ranks several candidates so you can compare structure, cloth-likeness, and how closely each option matches the target.

The optimizer may be restricted by maximum shafts, maximum treadles, maximum simultaneously pressed treadles, float tolerance, or the selected engine. Loosening those limits often improves the match, while keeping them tight can produce drafts that are more practical or more cloth-like but less exact.

Usually no. Both tools keep local autosave in the browser and also support undo and redo. Saving a file is still the safest way to keep a snapshot you can move between tabs, machines, or tools later.

Float Stress highlights places where long warp or weft floats make the cloth less balanced. Diff marks where the selected generated draft differs from the target you drew. Together they help explain both match quality and fabric behavior.