To Liftplan / To Tieup

To Liftplan / To Tie-up

Found on the Tools Menu

What Are These?

Weaving drafts can be written in two different formats:

• Tie-up format — The traditional way. You define a tie-up (which shafts are connected to which treadles), and then your treadling tells you which treadle to press for each pick. The loom figures out which shafts to raise by looking up the tie-up.

• Liftplan format — The direct way. Instead of treadles and a tie-up, each pick simply lists which shafts to raise. There's no tie-up involved — you're controlling the shafts directly, pick by pick. This is how dobby and computer-controlled looms work.

Both formats produce the same cloth. They're just two different ways of writing the same instructions.

To Liftplan and To Tie-up convert your draft between these two formats.

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Where to Find Them

• Ribbon: Tools tab > Conversions group

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To Liftplan

Converts your tie-up draft into liftplan format.

What Happens

TempoWeave reads each pick in your treadling, looks up the tie-up to see which shafts that treadle raises, and writes those shafts directly into the liftplan. When it's done, your draft is in liftplan mode — the treadling area now shows shaft activations instead of treadle numbers.

Important: In liftplan mode, the tie-up area is not visible. This is normal — liftplans don't use a tie-up, so there's nothing to show there. If you need to see or edit a tie-up, convert back to tie-up format first.

When to Use It

• You're preparing a draft for a dobby or computer-controlled loom that expects liftplan input

• You want to edit shaft activations directly, pick by pick, rather than working through treadles

• You're importing a tie-up draft but prefer to work in liftplan mode

• You need more flexibility than your treadle count allows — liftplan mode has no treadle limit since each pick is independent

How to Use It

1. Open the draft you want to convert

2. Go to Tools tab > To Liftplan

3. That's it — your draft is now in liftplan format

The cloth itself doesn't change. You're looking at the same fabric, just written differently.

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To Tie-up

Converts your liftplan draft into tie-up format.

What Happens

TempoWeave examines every pick in your liftplan and identifies the unique shaft combinations. Each unique combination becomes a column in the tie-up, and each pick is assigned to the treadle that matches its shaft pattern. The result is a compact tie-up with a treadling sequence that reproduces the same cloth.

A Note About the Tie-up

The tie-up you get may not look exactly like what you had before — or what you might expect. This is perfectly normal.

Here's why: there are many different tie-up and treadling combinations that produce the same cloth. When TempoWeave converts from liftplan to tie-up, it creates a valid tie-up, but it may not be the tie-up you originally started with. The shaft assignments in the tie-up columns and the order of the treadles may differ from what you're used to seeing.

The cloth structure is preserved exactly — the same shafts rise on the same picks, producing the same interlacement. Only the way the instructions are organized (which treadle maps to which shafts) may look different.

If you need a specific tie-up arrangement, you can always edit the tie-up and treadling manually after converting.

When to Use It

• You're preparing a draft for a floor loom with treadles

• You want to see the tie-up to understand the structure of the weave

• You imported a liftplan draft but prefer to work in tie-up mode

• You want to share a draft with another weaver who works with treadles

How to Use It

1. Open the draft you want to convert

2. Go to Tools tab > To Tie-up

3. TempoWeave converts the draft and shows how many treadles were needed

If your liftplan has more unique shaft combinations than the available treadle count can handle, TempoWeave will let you know. This can happen with complex liftplan drafts that use many different shaft patterns — more than a floor loom could practically accommodate with physical treadles.

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Tips

• Undo works — Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z) reverts the conversion in one step.

• Round-tripping — You can convert back and forth freely. Going from tie-up to liftplan and back always preserves the cloth, though the tie-up arrangement may change as described above.

• No data loss — Converting doesn't delete your draft data. It restructures how the weaving instructions are stored.

• Already converted? — If you try to convert a draft that's already in the target format, TempoWeave will let you know. No harm done.

• Check after converting — It's good practice to glance at the drawdown after converting to confirm everything looks right, especially after To Tie-up when the tie-up layout may be reorganized.

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Quick Reference

Action	What It Does	Tie-up Visible?
To Liftplan	Expands tie-up + treadling into direct shaft activations per pick	No — liftplans don't use a tie-up
To Tie-up	Groups shaft patterns into a tie-up with matching treadling	Yes — tie-up and treadling are restored