Patent ID: 8665496

Claim:
A control device for controlling a visible information forming device that forms visible information on a medium by varying positions of energy transmission, the control device comprising: a shape information storage configured to store a set of shape information on desired visible information to be plotted; a stroke generation unit configured to retrieve the set of shape information on the visible information to be plotted from the shape information storage to generate a first stroke data set and a second stroke data set each having transmission start coordinates and transmission end coordinates of a corresponding one of the first stroke and second stroke based on the retrieved set of shape information on the visible information to be plotted; a scanning start time computation unit configured to determine a scanning start time of the second stroke by adjusting, when one of first points forming the first stroke made visible by energy scanning based on the generated first stroke data set and one of second points forming the second stroke made visible, subsequent to the energy scanning of the first stroke, by energy scanning based on the generated second stroke data set are selected to have a shortest distance therebetween, one of a first waiting time to start scanning the second stroke, a traveling rate from the transmission end coordinates of the first stroke to the transmission start coordinates of the second stroke, and respective scanning rates of the first and the second strokes so as to have a desired time interval between scanning the selected one of first points of the first stroke and scanning the selected one of second points of the second stroke; a plotting instruction generation unit configured to generate a first set of plotting instructions including the transmission start coordinates and the transmission end coordinates of the first stroke, and a second set of plotting instructions including the scanning start time of the second stroke and the transmission start coordinates and the transmission end coordinates of the second stroke; a plotting instruction storage configured to store the generated first set of plotting instructions including the transmission start coordinates and the transmission end coordinates of the first stroke, and the generated second set of plotting instructions including the scanning start time of the second stroke and the transmission start coordinates and the transmission end coordinates of the second stroke; and a plotting instruction execution unit configured to execute the stored first set of plotting instructions including the transmission start coordinates and the transmission end coordinates of the first stroke, and the stored second set of plotting instructions including the scanning start time of the second stroke and the transmission start coordinates and the transmission end coordinates of the second stroke to plot the visible information on the medium.