Treadle Reducer

This function analyzes a draft and determines if it can be woven with fewer treadles, those changes can be accepted and applied to the tie-up and the weft (treadling). Usually this requires pressing certain treadles two at a time, often referred to as a skeleton tie-up.

The function can also be used on a liftplan and at times can modify the draft to use fewer shafts.

Options are:

Treadles on Loom – This setting defaults to the number of treadles specified in the draft. You can change it to the number of treadles available on your loom, or a smaller number, and the function will attempt to determine whether the draft can be woven with that number.

Time Budget – If finding a solution for the desired number of treadles is very complex or not possible, TempoWeave may take a long time to process the request. The default time budget is set to 2 minutes.

Prefer Single Treadles - This selection, on by default, instructs the algorithm to optimize the use of single treadles.

Frequency Weighting - This selection, on by default, instructs the algorithm to optimize single treadles to those use most often.

Example of Reducing Design with 12 Treadles

he weaving draft #532, found in Carol Strickler’s A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns, requires 14 treadles.

With this draft open, determine if the treadles can be reduced, use the Treadle Reducer function on the tools menu.

The No. Treadles on the loom first has the value 14. Change it to the number of treadles to try. In this case, the value was changed to 10, and Reduce and Preview was clicked. In this situation, a soluation was found with the 10-treadles requested. To apply the change to the Tie-Up and the Treadling, click Apply Reduction. Note: If you want to retain the former version, be sure to save the new file under a different name after applying the reduction.

After clicking Apply, a message will be given that the tie-up and weft have changed. Click OK and close the Treadle Reducer screen to return to the draft.

After the reduction, the draft is converted to the specified number of treadles, and the treadling sequence has the treadle selections on each pick, with some requiring pressing two treadles at once, to produce the same cloth.