Tiny Online Tools
From plotter commands to an editable vector
HPGL and HPGL-2 files describe a drawing as a sequence of pen moves — not something an SVG editor, laser cutter, or vinyl cutter's software can open directly. This tool converts one into a standard SVG you can open in Illustrator, Inkscape, or any vector tool.
Pens become groups
The most useful part of the conversion: every pen number in the source file becomes its own <g id="pen-1"> group in the output SVG, with that pen's colour and the stroke width you set applied to the whole group. If the original job used pen 1 for cutting and pen 2 for scoring, you can select, recolour, or hide each one independently after conversion — the pen assignment survives as real SVG structure, not just a colour that happens to match.
Correct units
HPGL plotter units are a fixed 1/40 mm (1/1016 inch). This converter multiplies every coordinate by that factor before writing the SVG, so the output's width/height and viewBox are true millimetres — open it in any vector editor and the measurements are correct, not scaled by some arbitrary factor.
What it draws
Pen-up/pen-down moves in both absolute and relative coordinate modes, plus CI circles and AA/AR arcs, flattened into smooth polylines. If the source file uses a command this converter does not draw, conversion still completes — it just does not include that geometry.
Options
Set the stroke width (in millimetres) applied to every pen's group before downloading; it is purely cosmetic and does not change the underlying path geometry.
Typical uses
Bring an old sign-cutting or CAD/CAM export into a modern vector workflow, prepare a plotter file for a laser cutter or vinyl cutter that only accepts SVG, or just get a plotter job into a format you can inspect and edit. Nothing leaves your device — parsing, conversion and the download all happen in your browser.