Just beginning with Inkscape, and want to see if it can make some really nice gauges for use in industrial HMIs.
The star feature seems quite nice to make a dial of equally spaced tickmarks. Where I'm stuck is whether or not I can break that star apart. What I have so far is two circles to mask off the inner part of the star, but I need to be able to delete the bottom tickmarks between say 135 and 225 degrees. I'm not sure if I can do this or not. Will this work or should I start over with a different approach? thx
Update, I'm getting better results using Stroke to path and Cut path, but it's trial and error with the workflow...
A little update, starting to get into this add-on, looking good so far. Open to any critique, keeping in mind I'll probably fix the taper on the pointer.
New question. I want to be able to save this as a .wmf file for funtionality, but the quality is pretty bad when I reopen. Is there any trick to getting maximum quality on a .wmf?
I have not used WMF much, so I'm not sure. I thought WMF was a raster format, until I looked it up just now. Wikipedia says it's a compound format, meaning that it can contain both raster and vector formats. If there's a raster version of the guage in the file, it might not look right if you scaled (re-sized) or zoomed it. But the vector version should be ok.
Or if you used Edit menu > Make a bitmap copy, that could have put a raster version of it in the file. Or it's always possible there's a new bug of some sort.
I'd offer to examine a file, except I'm not sure what kind of program would open a WMF file. I don't have Word, which is the only place I've heard of using a WMF file. I'm not sure if Inkscape can open a WMF file....hhmm.... Well anyway, others might be able to look at it, so feel free to share it, if you like.
Thanks for the reply. I'm trying to import the Inscape saved .wmf to a program called Sybol Factory(part of a Rockwell graphics program). In order to maintain seperate objects, it needs to use .wmf format. But the quality is terrible. I'm tyring to figure out where the issue lies.
Oh I see. You used a gradient mesh? It probably does not recognize it, since it's not even part of the SVG standards yet. Maybe that's the culprit? If you can find a way to use regular gradients, that might fix it.
If the font you used on the text is important, you probably want to convert the text to path before you import to the other program. Although it looks fairly ordinary.
I don't see anything else that could potentially cause a problem, from the SVG
No difference dumping the gradient. Still bad import quality. I suspect .wmf has some different standards, and Symbol Builder is using .wmfs from Illustrator or Corel draw etc, something they have that works for them. C'est la vie....
Inkscape stays pretty strictly to SVG standards, where the other graphics programs probably don't. You may be right that they built something that works for the tools they have (or had) at hand.
You said, or at least what I understand from your comments is that you need all the elements to be separate objects. What if you rasterized the object with the gradient (export PNG or Make a bitmap copy). It would still be a separate object, but not vector. Don't know if that would work, but just a thought.
I guess I really only need the needle as a seperate object to attach rotational animation. The outer ring is nice as an individual item as well as it can be turned back into gradient fill easily in the final editor. But I can export the background as PNG with very good quality and then throw a needle on top that in the Rockwell editor. Just a bit more thinking about sizing and fiddling with the needle pivot.
Beginners' Questions Help making gauges
Inkscape.org
Just beginning with Inkscape, and want to see if it can make some really nice gauges for use in industrial HMIs.
The star feature seems quite nice to make a dial of equally spaced tickmarks. Where I'm stuck is whether or not I can break that star apart. What I have so far is two circles to mask off the inner part of the star, but I need to be able to delete the bottom tickmarks between say 135 and 225 degrees. I'm not sure if I can do this or not. Will this work or should I start over with a different approach? thx
Update, I'm getting better results using Stroke to path and Cut path, but it's trial and error with the workflow...
I like this extension: https://github.com/brathering82/inkscape
Example screenshot: https://vektorrascheln.de/posts/2016/Jun/inkscape-entdecker-anordnen1.html#skalen-erweiterung
Nice find thx!
A little update, starting to get into this add-on, looking good so far. Open to any critique, keeping in mind I'll probably fix the taper on the pointer.
New question. I want to be able to save this as a .wmf file for funtionality, but the quality is pretty bad when I reopen. Is there any trick to getting maximum quality on a .wmf?
I have not used WMF much, so I'm not sure. I thought WMF was a raster format, until I looked it up just now. Wikipedia says it's a compound format, meaning that it can contain both raster and vector formats. If there's a raster version of the guage in the file, it might not look right if you scaled (re-sized) or zoomed it. But the vector version should be ok.
Or if you used Edit menu > Make a bitmap copy, that could have put a raster version of it in the file. Or it's always possible there's a new bug of some sort.
I'd offer to examine a file, except I'm not sure what kind of program would open a WMF file. I don't have Word, which is the only place I've heard of using a WMF file. I'm not sure if Inkscape can open a WMF file....hhmm.... Well anyway, others might be able to look at it, so feel free to share it, if you like.
Thanks for the reply. I'm trying to import the Inscape saved .wmf to a program called Sybol Factory(part of a Rockwell graphics program). In order to maintain seperate objects, it needs to use .wmf format. But the quality is terrible. I'm tyring to figure out where the issue lies.
Hhmm.... Wow, Inkscape opened the WMF!
Oh I see. You used a gradient mesh? It probably does not recognize it, since it's not even part of the SVG standards yet. Maybe that's the culprit? If you can find a way to use regular gradients, that might fix it.
If the font you used on the text is important, you probably want to convert the text to path before you import to the other program. Although it looks fairly ordinary.
I don't see anything else that could potentially cause a problem, from the SVG
No difference dumping the gradient. Still bad import quality. I suspect .wmf has some different standards, and Symbol Builder is using .wmfs from Illustrator or Corel draw etc, something they have that works for them. C'est la vie....
Inkscape stays pretty strictly to SVG standards, where the other graphics programs probably don't. You may be right that they built something that works for the tools they have (or had) at hand.
You said, or at least what I understand from your comments is that you need all the elements to be separate objects. What if you rasterized the object with the gradient (export PNG or Make a bitmap copy). It would still be a separate object, but not vector. Don't know if that would work, but just a thought.
I guess I really only need the needle as a seperate object to attach rotational animation. The outer ring is nice as an individual item as well as it can be turned back into gradient fill easily in the final editor. But I can export the background as PNG with very good quality and then throw a needle on top that in the Rockwell editor. Just a bit more thinking about sizing and fiddling with the needle pivot.