Discussion: Pin Punch Font

I'm planning to host skills development and informal meets using pin punches, and would like to be able to print a neat table of the correct punch patterns as a blown-up, easy-to-read answer key.

Is there a font out there (or an easy way to create one) that corresponds to the range of pin punch patterns?

Just a thought - you may want to check with Gale Teschendorf of http://goorienteering.com/O_Gear.html. Some of those pin punches he is selling appear to have printed or so patterns showing which set has which patterns. Or maybe the manufacturer of your set can provide you such template.

The o-store.ca https://o-store.ca/en/vavrys-orienteering-punches-... has punches with more elaborate patterns.

There are free programs to create fonts. Seems like punch patterns would be pretty easy to whip up.

I believe Purple Pen does that.

I wrote a similar program from scratch to generate PNG files of the expected pin pattern for each course (as seen from the front and back) when using EMIT tags, some of the controls had wild card/programmable punches and some needed to use two different codes just to get enough punches to avoid any queues during the relay first legs. I encoded this using different colors for required and wild card pin holes.

Thanks to all for your responses.
@haywoodkb - I was not aware of that - it does it very nicely.

For those to whom this might be as new as it was to me:

To associate punch patterns with control ID numbers:
Event -> Punch Patterns
(it seems to only offer a 7x7, more than adequate for my purposes)

To print punch cards:
File -> Print Punch Cards
(here you can set the #rows and #cols to match the shape of the punch card or on-map punch boxes you may be using)

OCAD Course Planning doesn't seem to have this functionality.

Quick/simple POC in R: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmMT5E-2wBxLh0rpWpMFujyt9bEN?e...

FWIW, I also fiddled with BIrdFont and FontForge. The latter seemed easier to deal with and had more potential to actually make fonts without having to pay/upgrade. It was too complex for the simple task of dot patterns, so I went for a code solution.

A possibly faster work-around:
I would bet that you could 1. punch a master card, maybe a light colored piece of cardstock so that the holes show up better, 2. take a picture of it with your phone, 3, print that picture at desired enlargement.