> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.tempoweave.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.tempoweave.com/help-by-menu-tabs/design-menu/pattern-and-ground-drawloom-drafts.md). # Pattern and Ground (Drawloom Drafts) *Available on Desktop. Requires the Pro tier.* ### What It Does Pattern and Ground is TempoWeave Studio's drafting mode for **drawloom and compound structures** — damask, lampas, beiderwand, and related weaves where a figure is woven *on top of* a ground cloth. These structures can't be expressed in a single threading and tie-up, because the loom itself has two kinds of control: * A **pattern (figure) harness** — up to 128 pattern shafts, driven directly by a **pattern liftplan**. On a drawloom these are the pattern shafts or drawcords that raise the figure. * Up to two **ground shaft groups, A and B** — each with its own threading and treadling (up to 32 shafts and 32 treadles per group). These weave the ground structure: the twill or satin binding, the tabby of a lampas binding warp, and so on. The two systems meet in **four tie-ups** — AA, AB, BA, and BB — one for every combination of shaft group and treadle group (the first letter is the shaft group, the second the treadle group). Because a treadle can command shafts from either group, the tie-ups are the bridge that decides, end by end and pick by pick, whether the ground weaves or the figure shows. A Pattern and Ground draft opens as a normal document tab with the full TempoWeave experience: palette sidebar, zoom, selection and copy/paste, undo, printing, View Fabric, and cloud features.
*** ### Opening and Creating * **New draft**: Design tab → **Pattern and Ground** group → **Pattern and Ground**. The Setup dialog asks for pattern shafts, ground shafts/treadles for groups A and B, and starting size. * **Convert an existing draft**: with a standard draft active, Design tab → **Convert to Pattern and Ground**. Your threading becomes the pattern threading and your lifts become the pattern liftplan in a new tab; the original draft is untouched. You then add the ground layers on top. * **Open a file**: Pattern and Ground drafts open from anywhere a normal draft does — File Open, Recents, MyCloud. A `.twa` saved from this mode reopens fully; see File formats for what other programs see. * **Import into the pattern layer**: inside a Pattern and Ground tab, the view's **Open** button can load any standard WIF or TWA *into the pattern layer only* — threading, lifts, and colors — leaving your grounds, palette, and density alone. This is the quickest way to bring a figure in from a standard draft. If the import is larger than the current draft, the ground threadings and treadlings repeat across the growth so the ground doesn't vanish under the new area. *** ### The Editing Surface Reading top-to-bottom on the warp side: end-number ruler, warp color strip, **pattern threading** (the figure), **ground threading A**, and **ground threading B** (hidden when group B is off). Shaft 1 is the *bottom* row of each band, and the warp is right-anchored — end 1 sits at the right edge, weaving convention. To the right of the drawdown, in weaving order outward: **treadling B** (innermost), **treadling A**, the **pattern liftplan**, the weft color strip, and the pick-number ruler. The tie-ups sit above their treadle columns, beside the threading bands. Everything edits with the familiar gestures: | Where | Click | Drag | | --------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | | Threading bands | Set the end's shaft (click the same cell again to clear) | Paint along the band | | Treadlings | Set the pick's treadle (one treadle per group per pick) | Paint down the picks | | Liftplan | Toggle a pattern shaft for that pick | Paint on or off | | Tie-ups | Cycle **solid ↔ blank**; Cmd/Ctrl/Shift-click cycles **dot ↔ blank** | — (tie-ups edit per click) | | Color strips | Paint the active palette color | Paint along the strip | The ribbon drawing tools (**Straight**, **Point**, **Line**) work in all thread grids with a drag preview, the **Select** tool (or Alt-drag) makes a marquee for copy/cut/paste/delete and the right-click transform menu (Invert, Reverse, Flip, Rotate, Shift), and the **Fill** menu seeds common starting points — straight/point threadings per band, twill and tabby treadlings, and one-click "all dots" for the cross tie-ups. Every gesture is one undo step. The toolbar also offers **Setup** (change harness sizes and density), **Expand Pattern** (découpure — every pattern square becomes *n* ends × *m* picks), **Insert Binding Ends** (adds an unpatterned end after every interval, the lampas/beiderwand binding-warp step), **Paste Pattern** (Image Center figures paste into the liftplan), and **Hide Pattern** (collapses the tall figure threading band when you're working on the grounds). A few more editing conveniences: * **Select Special** narrows a marquee to just the cells you name — handy for lifting one shaft's marks out of a busy band. * **Keyboard color entry** works along both color strips exactly as in standard drafts: tap a strip to place the cursor, then type the Active Palette numbers (see the Color Palette guide). * **Hovering a thread** shows its yarn name and thickness in a hint, so you can audit a dressing without opening the palette. * **Add/Remove Thread** and **To End** work on the pattern bands just as in standard drafts. #### Design Repeats The **Design Repeats** dialog (Design tab) works per band. **Quick Repeat** multiplies the whole warp or weft. **Advanced Repeat** copies a source range to a start position for a repeat count — regular, advancing, or decreasing — with **To End** filling to the edge of the draft, and options to carry **colors** and **thickness** along. Color and thickness each also have their own repeat mode for painting a short sequence across the full warp or weft without touching the structure. *** ### The Tie-Ups: Three Cell States This is the heart of Pattern and Ground, and the one place where it works differently from a standard tie-up. **Each tie-up cell has three states, and the empty state is not neutral.** Think of each cell as the physical cord between one treadle and one shaft on a countermarch loom: | Cell | Meaning | What the shaft does when the treadle is pressed | | --------- | ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Solid** | Tied to rise | The shaft **rises** — an authoritative command | | **Blank** | Tied to sink | The shaft **sinks** — *also* an authoritative command | | **Dot** | Not tied | The shaft group **abstains** — no opinion, the decision passes down to the pattern | The dot is what makes the figure possible. Where every active tie-up abstains, control falls through to the **pattern liftplan** — the figure harness decides whether that end rises. Where any tie-up gives a command, the ground wins and the figure is hidden. A draft whose tie-ups are only solid and blank weaves *pure ground everywhere*; the pattern appears **only where dots delegate**. #### How each cell of cloth is decided For every end on every pick, TempoWeave resolves in this order: 1. Each ground group that has **an active treadle on this pick** and **a threaded shaft for this end** looks up its tie-up cell: solid = rise, blank = sink, dot = abstain. (An end threaded in group A consults AA against treadling A and AB against treadling B; an end in group B consults BA and BB.) 2. If every consulted cell abstained, the **pattern liftplan** decides: the end rises if its pattern shaft is lifted on this pick. An end on no pattern shaft stays down. 3. If the consulted cells *disagree* — one says rise, another says sink — that's a **conflict** (next section). #### The classic setup step Because blank means "sink," the cross tie-ups **AB and BA start out as walls of sink commands**. In any draft where picks press treadles from both groups (lampas being the classic case), your first setup step is to fill AB and BA entirely with dots — the Fill menu has one-click commands for exactly this. Forgetting it is the most common reason a figure "isn't showing": the blank cross tie-up is authoritatively holding every end down on the other group's picks. *** ### Conflict Cells A **conflict** is a cell of cloth where the ground harnesses give one end contradictory orders on the same pick — one tie-up commands it to rise while another commands it to sink. On a real loom this is a physical impossibility (a shaft can't go both ways), and in a draft it always means there's a mistake in the setup. TempoWeave renders conflict cells **solid red** in the drawdown and counts them in the status bar (**⚠ N conflict cells**). They stay flat red even with Show Interlacement on — a conflict is never softened into a plausible-looking thread. Some other drafting programs silently pick one of the two commands and discard the other, which weaves *something*, just not necessarily what you'll get at the loom; TempoWeave shows you the contradiction instead so you can fix the draft before dressing. #### What causes conflicts A conflict needs an end that answers to **two tie-ups at once** which disagree: * **An end threaded in both group A and group B** (legal and useful — it's how the Chinese-loom style combines a rising group and a sinking group in one cloth) where, on some pick, the A-side tie-up says rise and the B-side says sink, or vice versa. * **A pick that activates treadles in both groups** where an end's two consulted tie-ups disagree — most often because a cross tie-up (AB or BA) was left blank instead of dotted, so its "sink everything" fights the other group's rise commands. #### Fixing them Look at the red cell's end and pick, and ask which tie-ups that end consults on that pick. Almost always the fix is one of: 1. **Dot the cross tie-ups** (AB/BA) so each group only speaks through its own treadles. 2. **Dot the disagreeing cell** so that group abstains and the other group's command (or the pattern) stands. 3. **Unthread the end from one group** if it was double-threaded unintentionally. When the counter reads zero, every cell of the drawdown is something a loom can actually weave. *** ### Colors, Yarns, and Views The standard **palette sidebar** is fully available: Active Palette, swap and exchange (Core tier and up), Edit Yarn with full metadata and variegation, sorts, and add/remove. Painting the color strips uses the selected swatch; **Sync Thickness** behaves exactly as in standard drafts — swaps, exchanges, yarn edits, and strip painting carry the yarn's thickness to the affected threads when it's on, and leave hand-set thickness alone when it's off. * **Show Thickness** (View tab) scales every end column and pick row by its yarn thickness across the whole surface — threading bands, drawdown, treadlings, and liftplan stay aligned. * **Show Interlacement** (View tab) renders the drawdown with the woven look: the underlying thread visible in the gaps and rounded highlights on the top thread. It turns itself off at very small zoom (the detail is unreadable below 5-pixel cells) and at extreme zoom-out, where the flat rendering takes over for speed. * **View Fabric** (V, or View tab) opens the fabric preview using the computed compound cloth, project density, and per-thread thickness. * **Back View** flips the drawdown to show the reverse of the cloth — essential for damask, where the figure and ground exchange faces. * **Cloth Simulation** and **3D View** work from the compound cloth just as they do for standard drafts. #### Loom Conventions All four draft-orientation settings apply to Pattern and Ground, exactly as in standard drafts (Settings → Default Settings): **shaft 1 at top or bottom**, **treadle 1 at left or right**, **treadling direction** top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top, and **Origin Side**. Choosing **Origin Side: Left** mirrors the entire surface for Swedish-convention drafts — end 1 anchors at the left edge and the treadlings, liftplan, and tie-ups all move to the left side of the drawdown. #### Grid Overlay The **Grid Overlay** (configured in Project Info) draws heavier gridlines at the interval you choose — every 4 and 10, say — across the threading bands, liftplan, treadlings, and drawdown, matching the standard-draft overlay. On a 128-cord figure it's the difference between counting squares and reading them. #### Float Check **Float Check** (Tools tab, or Ctrl/Cmd+F) scans the computed cloth for warp and weft floats over your threshold, lists them, and clicking a result scrolls the draft to the offending spot. On a figured draft this is the honest answer to "will that motif edge leave a quarter-inch float?" #### Section Marks The **Section Marker** button works as in standard drafts, across the pattern warp and weft only: with marking mode on, drag along the weft to mark a pick range (Hem, Body, Border...) or along the warp for an end range, name it when you release, and the range renders as a tinted, labeled band. Right-click in marker mode (or reopen the dialog) to manage marks — rename, retype the range, or delete. Weft section marks are what the Weave Assistant uses for jumping between parts of the piece. *** ### Project Info and Planning The ribbon **Project Info** button opens the familiar multi-tab dialog with the tabs that apply to Pattern and Ground: **Setup** (sett/beat and units; the harness layout is shown read-only — change it in the view's Setup dialog), **Project Notes**, **Planning**, **Yarn Usage**, **Loom Dressing**, and **Weaver's Writeup**. #### Loom Dressing (heddle and cord counts) The Loom Dressing tab is the drawloom counterpart of the standard heddle count: it reads the actual threadings and tells you what to put on the loom — * **Ground A and Ground B heddles per shaft**, from each group's threading, with group totals. * **Pattern cords/maillons**: how many draw cords the figure actually uses, how many ends each cord carries, and which ends they are — plus the count of ends that carry no pattern at all. Print it from Print Center (below) for a dressing sheet to carry to the loom. Two Planning notes that matter for figured drafts: * **Warp yardage is zero until you enter a Planned warp length** — the Yarn Usage tab marks the affected numbers with `*` until you do. * **Weft yardage is computed from the draft's actual picks.** A figured draft is often *one repeat* of the design, so the woven length can be just a few inches. Enter the **Woven Length override** for the length you actually intend to weave and press Calculate Yarn to see honest weft requirements. *** ### Printing Print Center on a Pattern and Ground tab offers: * **Draft Layout** — the full surface (threadings, tie-ups, drawdown, treadlings, liftplan) with number rulers, fit to one page. * **Drawplan** — the pattern liftplan printed pick-by-pick with pick numbers: your at-the-loom sheet for which drawcords or pattern shafts to pull on each pick. * **Tie-Up Sheet** — the four tie-ups at loom-side size for tying the countermarch. * **Warp Winding Order** — the warp color sequence with run counts, same as the standard-draft report (winding options apply). * **Weft Color Order** — the weft color sequence with run counts. * **Loom Dressing** — the heddle and draw-cord report from Project Info as a printable sheet. * **Weaver's Writeup** — the writeup document, when one exists. *** ### Weave Assistant **Weave Assistant** (Tools tab) opens the Pattern and Ground weaving window: a large pick counter with a progress bar, the **draw cords to pull** for the current pick shown both as compressed runs ("3–7, 12, 19–24") and as tap-size chips, and the **ground treadle(s)** to press — A and B tiles, with B hidden when the draft has no group B. A preview line shows the next pick so you can plan the change while beating. * **Advance** with the Next button, Space, Enter, or the arrow keys; back up with Left/Backspace. * The **Section** dropdown lists the draft's weft section marks — pick "Body" and the assistant jumps to its first pick. * Your **current pick is remembered** in the draft file, so closing the assistant (or TempoWeave) and coming back resumes where you stopped. Save after weaving to keep the position. *** ### Cloud and Sharing Pattern and Ground drafts are first-class citizens in MyCloud and the Pattern Library: **Save to Cloud**, Browse thumbnails, open-from-cloud, and **Share** all work, and the draft round-trips at full fidelity. As with local files, older versions and mobile open the pattern layer as a standard liftplan draft. *** ### File Formats and Interchange * **TWA (native)** — full fidelity. The draft, palette, yarn metadata, thickness, density, notes, planning, and writeup all round-trip. Older TempoWeave versions and mobile open the *pattern layer* of the file as a standard liftplan draft, so nothing errors — they just don't show the grounds. * **WIF (interchange)** — saving to `.wif` writes a standard pattern-layer WIF plus a private `TempoWeave DRAWLOOM` section carrying the complete draft. TempoWeave reopens it fully; other WIF programs see a clean liftplan draft of the figure. * **Duplicate Tab** works as in standard drafts and copies the complete draft (the writeup travels with the file, not the duplicate). *** ### Quick Reference | Action | How | | ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | | Toggle a tie-up block | Click (solid ↔ blank) | | Toggle a tie-up dot | Cmd/Ctrl/Shift-click (dot ↔ blank) | | Fill cross tie-ups with dots | Fill menu → Tie-up AB / BA: All Dots | | Marquee select | Select tool, or Alt-drag | | Transforms / shifts | Right-click a selection | | Expand pattern (découpure) | Toolbar → Expand | | Insert binding ends | Toolbar → Insert Binding | | Collapse the figure band | Toolbar → Hide Pattern | | Fabric preview | V | | Float check | Cmd/Ctrl+F | | Mark a section | Section Marker on, drag along warp or weft | | Weave at the loom | Tools → Weave Assistant | | Undo / Redo | Cmd/Ctrl+Z / Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+Z |