A complete list of all of the letters with explanations can be found here. The most important ones are arguably G (used in most movement commands), M (miscellaneous commands), X, Y and Z (the last three are used to define positions in the X,Y,Z space, absolute or incremental). These letters corresponds to different types of commands. Everywhere you look in the code you will mostly see letters with numbers behind them.

A CNC mill interpreting G-code in real-time Structure and CommandsĮach new line (called block) in the G-code can be roughly regarded as a new command.

G-code has many dialects or variants, but most (or all) adhere to certain common rules. G-code is the most widely used programming language for controlling industrial machines such as mills, lathes and cutters as well as 3D-printers. As a natural continuation from last week, we’re now going to talk about such toolpaths, called G-code, and how to generate those in Inkscape. The third suggestion on why to do such a thing involved creating toolpaths for machines. In last week’s post we discussed how to create vector graphics from bitmaps in Inkscape.

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