I also hope to find some hatch property's so I can change the angle, line thickness and spacing. Using numbers, not the node tool. Also interested in getting one node tool for multiple fill areas if thats possible. But strongly prefer to edit hatch patterns with numbers. ie what if I want to change line spacing, but not line thickness? Or I want to change line thickness and not spacing? Or I want to change 45deg to 44deg. Or just move the pattern center, so its not doing funny intersects with its boarder. Without changing any dimensions... Node tool seems to change everything all at once and is really hard to control. Especially with a regular mouse or touchpad.
However, I can probably troubleshoot some of the hatching problems. Do I understand correctly that you're using a pattern fill for the hatches - a custom pattern?I'm not sure of the correct terms. I used the Hatch Patterns.svg that came with this tutorial https://inkscape.org/en/~henkjan_nl/%E2%98%85patterns-for-mechanical-drawings-in-inkscape as described in the tutorial. click on pattern in hathes document, ctrl+C to copy. Then shift+ctrl+v to paste the pattern in to working document. I have tried making custom patterns too, but can't get the lines consistently and repeatably well spaced and angled using node tool. Long term goal is to use the python script from tutorial to make a set of patterns I can save in inkscape, and maybe freecad as well. But I'm a linux dummy sometimes and don't know how to use the script.. (probably right click and run, haven't had time to play around yet)
And I think one of your questions is about....closing the shapes properly, so that you can fill them. You may be already on the right track for that, I'm not sure. I'll have a better idea when I look at the SVG file, in a minute. Sometimes you can fill a shape that looks closed but technically is not a closed path. But usually it's good practice to make sure they are closed.
A closed path means that all the nodes are joined together. You can do that with the Node tool, if you didn't already discover it. Select the 2 nodes which are open, and click "Join selected nodes" button on the Node tool control bar.
One thing I can't figure out is what's under the 3 part circle. It's a series of 2 node paths in the shape of a circle, except not a solid circle. Are you aware of how that happened? In fact, throughout this file are lots and lots of 2 node paths which are not connected together, although they are lying on top of other paths. Most of them are a Group of 1, which gives me a clue that you might have opened a file which was started in another program, in Inkscape. That might or might not have resulted in a format conversion. Was part of this drawing started in another program, and as a different format?
Sounds great!
Just a reminder inkscape is not a cad program and it's accuracy is quite limited. In the svg output at the preferences (Shift+Ctrl+P) you can set more digits to be saved yet there is some hard-wired limit for the operations as well.
Resulting you can end up with like 0,0005 px differences opposed to typed in values in the top spinboxes.
Another main difference is inkscape is Bézier path based. Although svg can hold circular arcs, there is no gui to do so which is another great limitation for cad drawings. Here (https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#circles_cubic) is a comparison between the two.
By the screenshots it did seem your paths were cut to smaller portions. Need to check those svg-s.
Didn't read it all, but just wanted to suggest using the eggbot hatch extensions for hatching, they work pretty well:
https://github.com/evil-mad/EggBot/tree/master/inkscape_driver
With the top rectangle. Why are we keeping the white box and getting rid of the 4 lines underneath? I intuitively wanted to delete the white box and join the 4 lines. Although i can see its easy to add a pattern and boarder to the white box, and I can't seem to get the 4 lines to join up to become a box... Maybe that has something to do with it.
You mention moving stuff to lower layers. I assume its ok to create them where they do not exist? Couldn't seem to move the objects without a layer to move too, and even with a new bottom layer added. the toolbar option didn't seem to work? I had to right click object and move to layer.
Looking more at leaving the middle top node (assuming this will be handy to have later?) when I did this there where nome extra bits? the status bar called the "cusp node handles". Then I found the node wasn't attached to anything. perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree here, but it would be really useful to be able to snap a line to halfway later on. So I can provide the radius measurement on the drawing. I don't actually need dimensions on this drawing. Its a practice run for a patent drawing. Just trying to think ahead for later.
I'm interested in using the edit>find tool to find other bad bits. More information please :-| I tried opening it and clicking on objects. Seems to require text entry. I don't know what to write.
While on this topic. I notice the white shapes are easy to see when .svg uploaded to forum or opened in image programs with no default background. Could I change or remove the inkscape white background to make finding this stuff easier?
When I was selecting nodes. something funny happened when I used ctrl+scroll wheel to zoom with mouse over the multi node line. It seemed to be selecting nodes? Is there a cheat sheet with basic mouse controls and keyboard shortcuts somewhere? This is not the first time the mouse/keyboard has done unexpected things. Sometimes they look like usefull things too. Except I have no idea whats going on. And no idea what useful thins I am not using...
When joining nodes using box select. I had trouble box selecting. Does the object with the nodes need to be selected or something? This was the only way I could get it to work....
I have put chain paths .py and.inx in my share inkscape folder. What do I do with all the other stuff that came with the extension zip?
How do I actually use the extension
? The readme has about 3 repentances on the topic and I only understand half of it.
But it didn't work completely as hoped. I got a series of conected bits. This is still great. Because wouldn't take too long to join the ends manually.
Except some bits look funny. With white sections.
Other bits had double up lines like the circles. Some are needed some not so much. thinking I should have deleted these earlier?
I think I will wait for further instruction before proceeding.
I'd also be interested in just tracing over this part. I don't actually know how to "Draw a single line" yet. Let alone draw a series of connected lines to make a complex fillable shape.... i should probably do something about this....
There's more strangeness with groups as well. The circles are each a Group of 3. That would mean there are 3 objects in the group. But when ungrouped, there appears to be only one object there, identified as a Group of 1. If I use Objects menu > Objects to sort it out, I see that the other 2 objects are each a Group of 0. I have no idea how that is even possible. No clue why Inkscape would even allow it (not to mention how that actually works, haha!). To my knowledge, there is no way to make a Group of 0, and I don't know how it happens or what it means.
In Inkscape, making a stripe pattern is not as easy as you may have found it in the cad program. In Inkscape, the length and angle of the line determine the spacing. The patterns that you are using are made using the Rectangle tool.... Or I guess that's assuming they were made with Inkscape. I think you said you got them from an Inkscape extension? And it looks like they are simply long, skinny rectangles, rotated.
Actually, I was a little surprised. Just looking at the stripe pattern of the main large object, I thought they were 45 degrees. But not quite -- they're 41.319 degrees!
Anyway, of course, you can't leave everything out of the way to do the last steps, because there really aren't any landmarks where you could snap them precisely back into place. Fortunately, Inkscape provides a way to select things that are hidden behind something else, because you'll need it.
With the lower circle. Remember it was 3 parts and I joined them. I may or may not have grouped them together before joining nodes. I can see how that might cause incorrect properties to appear.
Anywhere thats got a good explanation and examples of all the terms like layers, groups, nodes, paths etc etc?
The angles where all eyeballed... I was a concreter for 13 years and have been engineering for 8. Over 3deg out is pretty rough for me ;p I literally just (5 min ago) repaired a bent carpenters square by eye and got it within 0.015% first try
I noticed when copying pattern properties, sometimes the little x copies into a new spot and I have to move it onto the other little x to get the patterns to align. Is there a way to snap the 2 x's together a bit faster than zooming in and mouse manipulating? or even group them all as one? i managed to box select circle or square for 2 matching patterns once, and adjust them together, but can't seem to repeat it.
How would I make the lines blue on a red background for eg?
I did find some issues with alt+left clicking. It didn't seem to do anything, not change in status bar
Really curious why after doing the difference on the circle and rectangle. You said to put the circle back where it was?
Now, if you move the remaining circle out of the way, you should be seeing through both rectangles. But be sure to put the circle back, if you move it to take a peek.
I cant seem to find the circles used to make the holes in the rectangles. Did they get consumed in creating rectangles?
Also is the oder of selection important with the path booleans (union difference etc etc)? I know in freecad if I want to subtract one part from another part for eg. It's important to select the bit you want to keep first and the bit to be cut away second. Things like difference and union are not so fussy, but sometime selecting the wrong part first will give you a problem down the track.
I have also added some dimensions. This was way over my head a few days ago. Came out ok. Wouldn't be too bad if I only had to add 1 or 2 dimensions. Could be time consuming to do many though. I think I still have room for improvement.
Is it possible to make a re-usable template to do this?
Lazur, can you explain a bit more about that new dimensioning extension? I don't remember having seen anything like that. Maybe the LPE is what you mean? http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.93#Measure_Line_LPE