SonoDraw is a vector-based drawing program for laying out the automated patterns that a SonoPlot Microplotter can dispense.
A Microplotter is a dispenser that uses controlled ultrasonics to deposit fluid in a noncontact manner. This patented technology can produce picoliter droplets that form features on a surface as small as 5 microns wide. When combined with automatic surface height calibration, coefficents of variability for deposited feature diameters as small as 10% can be achieved. A wide range of fluids can be used, including aqueous solutions and many organic-solvent-based mixtures. Fluids that other dispensers struggle with, such as saturated solutions for MALDI-ToF matrices, or fluids with viscosities up to 450 cP, can be deposited with ease. The ultrasonic pumping action is also an efficient cleaning mechanism for quickly depositing many solutions sequentially.
The fluid dispensing functions of the Microplotter are closer to those used in blueprint-drawing pen plotters than in inkjet printers, so the standard raster images (photos, bitmaps) used as inputs for inkjets are not optimal for the Microplotter. Instead, vector graphics are better suited to its unique capabilities. Raster images are composed of a grid of colored pixels, where vector graphics specify each feature in terms of what it represents (lines, points, arcs, etc.). The Microplotter's ability to dispense true continuous lines or arcs makes vector graphics a more natural fit for specifying what to print and where.
SonoDraw provides the ability to draw points (representing droplets of fluid), lines, arcs, and rectangular filled regions (made of overlapping lines). These are vector elements, and can be dragged around and edited after drawing. Patterns made from these elements can be saved to disk as XML files to be read by a Microplotter's control software, as well as loaded back in to SonoDraw for later editing.