This is a simple Inkscape extension that will generate customizable checkboards.
Copy (or link) checkerboard.py and checkerboard.inx to the following typical directory:
- Linux -
~/.config/inkscape/extensions(for your user only);/usr/share/inkscape/extensions(for all users) - OS X -
/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/extensions - Windows -
C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions
- Open Extensions > Render > Checkerboard... from the Inkscape menu
- On the Params tab, choose the cell size (size of the constituent squares), number of rows and columns, and whether to add the checkerboard to the current layer (if unchecked, the checkerboard will be added to the root layer)
- On the 1st color and 2nd color tabs, select the colors for the two sets of squares
- Click Apply
The checkerboard will be centered in your current viewport. It is in a group with an id of checkerboard, which consists of two subgroups of each set of cells, named diagonal1 and diagonal2. This facilitates changing the colors and other properties of each set quickly and easily. Within the diagonal groups, the cells have an id of cellAxB, where A is the column and B is the row in which they appear. A and B are zero-indexed, and increase left-to-right and top-to-bottom respectively. The intent of this was to hopefully simplify any kind of scripted processing you may want to do on the result.