Mostly a n00b, i have started using inkscape within the past 12 months to create/edit floor plans for my job (air con controls). I have only used it in the past to open PDFs, ungroup everything and remove off the drawing things we dont need (grids, text, duct work hashing/shading etc) and then exporting as a PNG for our GUI.
HOWEVER!! Today I have been tasked with keeping the ductwork on the page. Dont laugh, but for the past 14.5 years of my career I've coloured in the duct work using MS paint, different air conditioning units have to be shown in different colours etc. When i export my svg file to PNG it comes out blurry, and it dawned on me that durrrr Rachel, if you can change the colour of the stroke to be all black, you can fill in the objects with the required colours too. Which has worked well for all the rectangular duct work, but the smaller, flexible duct that goes out to the registers (where the air comes out onto the floor), the "object" isnt grouped (Im not sure on technical wording here), they're just single lines on the page that arent connected as a shape, they dont fill. So ive tried grouping them into an object, and combining them into an object, but when i "fill" it only paints the rounded parts, and outside of the lines (attached).
I *can* obviously use the bucket tool, but that too has it's own issues, in that it creates new objects on top of the duct work, often covering up the outline underneath, and also leaves gaps where the "fill" from the object & the new bucket object exist (attached 2), or where it perceives the edge of the object to be (attached 3), which is annoying because then i have to go in and check/edit/amend each and every bit of flexible duct on the floor layout.
TL;DR - is there a way that I can easily group & "fill" curved objects?
It looks like the curved corners are separate paths to the horizontal/vertical lines. The best solution would be to join the end nodes of the segments to make two paths, then close the shape by connecting the end nodes of those shapes with new segments. If the corners are arcs rather than Bézier curves then they'll need to be converted to paths first. Here's a rough demo of the steps.
It might help to learn how todraw proper lines - convert with Stroke to Path to fill with color instead of puzzling with a horde of separate segments which can be connected in one go BTW:
Thanks all - yesterday (before the first reply), that's what i ended up doing (going through and joining all the nodes together, which was laborious but worked), i DO love the idea of the bucket tool and sending the object behind, but i didnt know about the growing it by a few pixels, this will be VERY helpful, thank you!
I lost about 2 hours' worth of work yesterday afternoon because my inkscape keeps crashing, just as i finished one portion of the layout, and was leaving work after 5PM, i went to save & it crashed. SIGH!
Beginners' Questions Filling a combined path node with colour
Inkscape.org
Hi all,
Mostly a n00b, i have started using inkscape within the past 12 months to create/edit floor plans for my job (air con controls). I have only used it in the past to open PDFs, ungroup everything and remove off the drawing things we dont need (grids, text, duct work hashing/shading etc) and then exporting as a PNG for our GUI.
HOWEVER!! Today I have been tasked with keeping the ductwork on the page. Dont laugh, but for the past 14.5 years of my career I've coloured in the duct work using MS paint, different air conditioning units have to be shown in different colours etc. When i export my svg file to PNG it comes out blurry, and it dawned on me that durrrr Rachel, if you can change the colour of the stroke to be all black, you can fill in the objects with the required colours too. Which has worked well for all the rectangular duct work, but the smaller, flexible duct that goes out to the registers (where the air comes out onto the floor), the "object" isnt grouped (Im not sure on technical wording here), they're just single lines on the page that arent connected as a shape, they dont fill. So ive tried grouping them into an object, and combining them into an object, but when i "fill" it only paints the rounded parts, and outside of the lines (attached).
I *can* obviously use the bucket tool, but that too has it's own issues, in that it creates new objects on top of the duct work, often covering up the outline underneath, and also leaves gaps where the "fill" from the object & the new bucket object exist (attached 2), or where it perceives the edge of the object to be (attached 3), which is annoying because then i have to go in and check/edit/amend each and every bit of flexible duct on the floor layout.
TL;DR - is there a way that I can easily group & "fill" curved objects?
Thanks in advance.
It looks like the curved corners are separate paths to the horizontal/vertical lines. The best solution would be to join the end nodes of the segments to make two paths, then close the shape by connecting the end nodes of those shapes with new segments. If the corners are arcs rather than Bézier curves then they'll need to be converted to paths first. Here's a rough demo of the steps.
It might help to learn how todraw proper lines - convert with Stroke to Path to fill with color instead of puzzling with a horde of separate segments which can be connected in one go BTW:
Both the above are quite proper.
The fast and dirty way is to set the controls for the bucket to grow by a couple px and send the new object behind the existing lines.
Thanks all - yesterday (before the first reply), that's what i ended up doing (going through and joining all the nodes together, which was laborious but worked), i DO love the idea of the bucket tool and sending the object behind, but i didnt know about the growing it by a few pixels, this will be VERY helpful, thank you!
I lost about 2 hours' worth of work yesterday afternoon because my inkscape keeps crashing, just as i finished one portion of the layout, and was leaving work after 5PM, i went to save & it crashed. SIGH!
Make sure to have "Autosave" enabled: https://inkscape.org/forums/questions/have-you-set-your-autosave-check-it-now/