User-defined Characters

Design grids

To design a draft character you use a grid that has nine rows and eleven columns, as shown below.

128

 

 

64

 

128

32

 

84

16

 

32

8

 

16

4

 

8

2

 

4

1

 

2

t i i i i i I

1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 1 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 1 1

The grid on the left shows a design plan for a heart-shaped character. Although there are nine pins in your printer’s print head, note that you can use only eight of them in a single user-defined character. The heart design above uses the top eight pins, but you can also use the bottom eight by using the grid on the right as explained later in this section.

You generally don’t want to use row one (below the heavy line on the grid) except for characters that have descenders, like the letters y and g. Also, while you can use all 11 columns for a character, it’s best to leave the two right columns blank to provide space between characters.

4-22 Software and Graphics