Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Merge

Software license and download
This is an old software product, no longer available. If you need handwriting and data merge software, please see our new product, Bantam Tools NextDraw™ Merge

Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Merge software

AxiDraw owners: This software is available to AxiDraw owners at no added cost. If you own an AxiDraw and would like access, please contact support for a free download link.

If you purchase this software, we will follow up by email, with download links for the software and user guide. Your card will not be charged until your download is ready.

Your purchase includes:
  • Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Merge software for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
  • Comprehensive PDF user guide.
  • First-rate technical support.
  • Software updates for 2 years from the date of purchase.
  • License to use the software to generate artwork for and/or drive up to 5 pen plotters.
  • Hershey Advanced Python API and CLI (separate download, available upon request).

About Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Merge

Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Merge is our premium commercial software for handwriting emulation, and is a separate package from the publicly available (and open source) software for AxiDraw.

Hershey Advanced performs font substitution in your document, replacing text composed of regular computer fonts with plotter-ready stroke-based lettering. It also offers the ability to introduce a range of subtle "handwriting-like" defects, to help break the appearance of computer-generated writing. Hershey Advanced also has built-in automatic support for the Scriptalizer feature of Quantum Enterprises stroke fonts, providing variation between multiple font glyphs.

AxiDraw Merge is software designed to automate certain workflows on the AxiDraw, and essentially performs capabilities of both Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Control. AxiDraw Merge, in a single step, performs stroke-font substitution on your document using Hershey Advanced (complete with handwriting-like defects) and plots it to the AxiDraw. It can plot the next document after a time delay or button press. If you use the AxiDraw for handwriting-like applications, AxiDraw Merge takes away all the steps between printing multiple documents in a row. And, each page can be different if you are using the handwriting-like defects and/or the Scriptalizer feature.

You can also, optionally, use AxiDraw Merge to automatically populate a template with data sourced from a CSV (spreadsheet) file. This makes it quick and straightforward to print things like notes and envelopes where each needs to be personalized with a different name or address. You can even print multiple items like a note card and its envelope side by side, or print multiple items like cards or labels side by side.

Hershey Advanced API

In addition to the Inkscape plugins for Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Merge, Hershey Advanced is available in a full-featured command line interface (CLI) and as a full-featured Python library. These versions are much more suitable for automation environments, and pair well with the AxiDraw API, in its Python module and CLI variants.

About the software license

Hershey Advanced and AxiDraw Merge is a commercial software package which may not be rented, shared, modified, or redistributed.