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.
uv tool install inksimRequires Python 3.11+. See the installation guide for
uv setup and alternative installers.
inksim
inksim design.pes
inksim design.pes --playOn Windows, inksim-gui design.pes starts without a console window.
- Documentation index
- Installation and running
- User guide
- Rendering modes and overlays
- Inkscape / Ink/Stitch workflow
- Application interconnect
- Developer guide
- Contributing
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.
InkSim is released under the GNU General Public License v3 or later.