(Note that I'm a relative novice with Inkscape and vector art.)

I have a .SVG with many different Objects on it. I wanted to make some of them like stencils and so I tried to simply go to the Path > Difference. This worked okay for some, but not for others. Frustrated, I then went into the Node mode to try and tweak them there also, and I saw that I couldn't do anything there, either! Some of these Objects can't be edited at the Node level or as Paths. (I believe that it was originally created in Illustrator, though I'm not certain.)

Below is a screencap, and below that is the .SVG itself. If anybody can diagnose this and explain it to me, I'd be grateful.

The objects that you can't access with Node tool, or display nodes, are Groups. After you Ungroup them, you'll be able to get nodes with the Node tool, and to use path operations as well. First select with Selection tool. Look along bottom of window at status bar, where you'll see it identified as a Group of x. Object menu > Ungroup, or button on tool control bar

Brynn,

Thanks for the tip. But I did try that, and it still didn't work. I went to "Ungroup" again and it didn't change the behavior of those ones. I'll try again, though.

Sometimes there may be nested groups, so that you have to click Ungroup a few times, until message in status areas says "No groups to ungroup". And then there may be more than one group, so that if you ungroup everything in that one, you have to do the same for others. You can do it all at once by using Ctrl + A to select everything, the click ungroup until it says "No groups to ungroup".

Brynn,

Thanks for the suggestion, but it's still not working. Please take a look at the attached .SVG in the original post. For instance, the large blue rounded rectangle (the one pointed to in the graphic of my first post) cannot have its Nodes accessed. It just doesn't. I Ungrouped twenty times, it's not that.

Ooohhhhh! Sorry about that. It definitely was grouped, because I did look at the file. So ungrouping was not wasted work. But I didn't realize that one of the objects (well at least this one) is a clone of a path (the original of which is not even in this same document). Since there is only that one logo on the page, I had no clue that it might be a clone.

Anyway, after you've ungrouped everything, select the object in question, then Edit menu > Clone > Unlink clone. That will turn it into a regular path.

Sorry for the confusion.

Now as I look more closely through your file, there are some other objects there which I don't recognize. For example, the square part of the mortarboard is something called a "polyline". It does not display nodes with the Node tool. Since I don't even know what a polyline is, I'm not sure how to display nodes. I tried Path menu > Object to Path, and I do see nodes now. I would guess that should work for you as well, but since I know so little about it, there's a chance it won't.

Behind it is a white circle, which when selected is identified as a "circle". But when I engage the Ellipse tool, I don't see the handles of the circle, like I would expect. Object to path works for me as well, on that.

Whenever you select something with the Selection tool, look at the status area to learn what kind of object it is. If you find more clones, you should unlink them. If it is a polyline, circle, rectangle or ellipse, try Object to Path. I think that should get you through this file. If you have other files from the same source, it's possible you might encounter yet other types of objects. In many cases, Object to Path should work. But like with the Clone, there may be other solutions. So please feel free to post another message, if you need to

Thanks so much, Brynn. I haven't even tried applying your tips yet, but I'm confident that they'll work. I'll report back before too long. Thanks again!

Okay, now I made pretty much all the adjustments to the .SVG that I wanted to - thanks to Brynn's diagnostic efforts - but now there's some odd problem with the revised one. I tried to import it into Blender and this is what it said:



I've attached the revised .SVG. If anybody knows what that rejection line from Blender means and how to fix it, I'd appreciate it. Thanks as always.

I'm glad we finally worked it out
I know little to nothing about Blender or parsing or XML. But I might speculate that having the original apparently created with AI, then edited in Inkscape, what with all the (to me) unusual objects and such, might be contributing to this error. But that would be very uneducated speculation, lol!

Hopefully someone else can help with that.

Brynn,

I don't know anythinb about XML, either (which makes me feel so dependent on the work of others) but I think you were right - that all the work being done on the .SVG, as it was swapped from one program to another, and one user to another, and then had all these changes....that that just results in some convoluted, maze-like code, and Blender struggled with it.

So, what I did was simply cut-and-pasted the actual objects themselves onto a brand new .SVG, and that imported into Blender just fine. (Well, fine after I realized I still had more work to do on it!)

Thanks as always.

Oh, that's great!
You're welcome