Hi I'm new to Inkscape
I've purchased the Silver Bullet cutter
I know how to use scatter but cannot get the hearts around the edge to be symmetrical

Tried to attach an Inkscape example but I think I'm now locked out!!!!

Helen

Hi I'm a newbie to Inkscape

I've watched a lot of Youtube videos about scatter. No problem doing the circle and o scatter but I wanted to do a rectangle with hearts around it. When I go to live preview the hearts around the edge of the rectangle aren't symmetrical

I've tried altering the size of both the heart and rectangle and even copied /paste to try and get the proportion right

Any help would be appreciated

Welcome Helen!

Are you trying to use the Scatter filter? Or the Spray tool, which has a scatter option? Either way, I think both are meant to make a random scatter. To have a symmetrical placement, you'll probably have to do it manually.

Fortunately, assuming you're using the hearts and rectangle in your SVG file, it looks like you'll only need to place 5 along each side, and 3 on top and bottom. Plus, you could do one side and the top, then duplicate and flip (horizontally and vertically) for the other side and bottom.

Exactly how to make the symmetrical placement, depends on the precise size of the rectangle and hearts, as well as your personal preference. For myself, I would use a grid. I would draw the hearts so that they have whole number dimensions -- so that they are say 30 x 50 px, for example. It would be tricky, with a grid, to have to deal with say 29.4 px or 50.7, for example. (Yours are 61.834 x 54.384.) Then I would use snap to grid to place them symmetrically.

But there are a few different ways to do it, and probably several different ways, lol. To avoid all the math that would be involved in my 1st suggestion, you could use snapping of bounding boxes. As long as the hearts are all the same size, you could snap bounding box corners. Then the only math required would be to make the rectangle the proper size to hold the hearts, without gaps or overlap.

Ooorrr! And this might be the best! Another idea would be to use the Align and Distribute dialog. First you'd need to make all the hearts by duplicating. Then in the A and D dialog, use "Distribute centers equidistantly" button. Or maybe "Make gaps between objects equal". Or there maybe be other options there for you. This approach would require zero math, so probably the most attractive

Somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a really slick way to do this. But I can't seem to pull into my concious mind, at the moment. However, I have no doubt that others will suggest more and different techniques, lol