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Beginners' Questions How do I remove part of a path (stroke) in Inkspace?
  1. #1
    GloomDemon GloomDemon @GloomDemon
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    Image

    I have no idea how to delete part of a circle - please help.

    The image shows the picture i have in Inkscape (left) and the one I need to obtain (right - i did this in Paint)

  2. #2
    brynn brynn @brynn
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    Welcome to the forum!

    There are many ways you might delete part of a circle.  For the image you showed, here's how I would accomplish it.

    • select the circle
    • select that sort of oblong shape behind it (hold the Shift key to be able to select both at the same time - or else drag the Selection tool around both of them)
    • Path menu > Union

    (fyi, it's Inkscape, not Inkspace  🙂)

  3. #3
    GloomDemon GloomDemon @GloomDemon

    brynn Thank's a lot for the answer! I am terribly sorry for my mistake calling Inkscape incspace... apparently my spelling is even worse than graphics tecniques.

    I am having problems understanding the part about "oblong shape behind it" - I have included a picture of my circle being selected and I do neot seem to find any other shapes there...

    Sorry, I am VERY bad at graphics and even worse than that at vector graphics...

    Circle

  4. #4
    brynn brynn @brynn

    It's the object behind the circle.  Or that's touching the circle.

  5. #5
    GloomDemon GloomDemon @GloomDemon
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    Failure

    I am probably not doing something right... This is what happens when I select the parts and do Union on them

  6. #6
    brynn brynn @brynn
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    Oh, I see.  That means that object was not made in the way I thought it was.  Normally we ask for SVG file, so we can see the actual drawing.  This time, I thought I could probably guess about it.  But clearly, I guessed wrong. 

    I could guess again on how you can  make it work 😱 

    But it would be better if you could share the SVG file 🙂

  7. #7
    GloomDemon GloomDemon @GloomDemon

    Here it is. I created it by drawing lines - a am not aware of any other way of drawing though :-)))

    Drawing
  8. #8
    brynn brynn @brynn
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    Ok, now I see.  Normally I would show you a quick video.  But the kind of video I use isn't allowed here.  So I can only explain in words and screenshots.  Sorry they are so tiny, but you can make them bigger by clicking on them.

    • Select the drawing
    • Object menu > Ungroup
    • Now in the attached file called u1.png, you can see that the object which I thought was one whole object, is actually made of 8 objects (the status bar tells you, when they are selected)
    • Using the Node tool select 2 adjacent lines
    • Drag a tiny selection box around the nodes that are overlapping - see file u2.png where I've made an arrow to show an example of where 2 nodes are overlapping
    • Now click the Join selected nodes button in the Node tool control bar (the control bar is the first one above the horizontal ruler) (it's the 3rd from the left - watch for the hover text, to be sure you have the right button)
    • also in that screenshot, notice that the vertical line only extends halfway down to the next horizontal line, and there's another short segment.  So you need to connect the nodes there too
    • connect all the nodes, all the way around
    • repeat for the piece on the right side of the circle
    • select the left and right pieces, and do Path menu > Combine

    Now, the piece that I thought was one whole piece, really is one whole piece. And now you can select the large piece, and the circle, and do Path menu > Union, and it will work.

    Believe it or not, it would be much harder to break the circle at exactly the right places.  That's why these path operations (such as Union) were created.

    U2
    U1
  9. #9
    GloomDemon GloomDemon @GloomDemon

    Thank You for Your patience brynn ! With Your help I have finally managed it. :-)

    No wonder graphical design is a separate discipline in higher education - this stuff is really hard

    Ink 3
  10. #10
    brynn brynn @brynn

    You're welcome.  I always love to hear the good news.

    You know what they say, practice makes perfect  🙂

  11. #11
    GloomDemon GloomDemon @GloomDemon
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    brynn once again - thank You for Your help - here is a photo of how it turned up :-)

    It's an Arduino robot I am trying to make - my first attemp at it that is

    Spider Res
  12. #12
    brynn brynn @brynn

    Wow, that's impressive!

    It looks like it walks?

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