I am using concentric circles and masking but it is feels so very kludgy...

How to make nice straight lines flow into and bend curvaceously and then back to straight lines?

I've tried bezier curves but it always looks wrong and out of whack and sloppy.

Something like this - but with straight lines heading into and out of nicely rounded curves -


Thanks so much!

Hans

Create circles using ellipse tool while holding Ctrl down to get perfect circles. Then create a rectangle and set it's height to be the same as the "width of the circle". You can do it precisely using the grid while drawing or with snapping. Is this what you asked about?

There is also an easier way if I understood what you're trying to do. Use rectangle tool to draw a rectangle that is wider than it's tall. Then use the handles on the corners to curve them, hold Ctrl to make it even. If you do this all the way to the middle of the rectangle side you will get a half-circle ending on the left and right side of the rectangle. Then duplicate the rectangle and shrink it to get concentric effect.

Thanks, for some of that info - its helpful.

How would I make something like the above picture? The hard part for me to get my head around is the lower half of it.

The upper part is just concentric circles but the bottom half - I just can't figure out how to bend or create such things very well.

Thanks again!

Hans

you could cut part of the circles by going to path->object to path-> and then use to add nodes around where you want to cut off(select them both) and then near the top with the tool options click the button that is 5 away from the left which says "split path between two non endpoint nodes"

I'm not sure what you are going for so...

If have an arc that you want to continue into a straight line, once the arc is done with the do a convert to path then select the arc with . Black boxes will appear on the end of the arc. Then select . Start the straight line on the black box and it will be a continuation of the arc in one path.

If you want to make arc like in the image above use the and the round handle to make an arc. If you want to connect two arcs like in your image. Draw the two arcs. Turn on snap nodes to nodes in Documents properties shift ctrl D >> snap tab. With snap the end nodes will snap to each other then do a combined under paths menu to get one path. If you are talking about the aesthetics of making a sharp angle in inkscape, I usually have to put in 2 or 3 nodes to get a curve that doesn't look kludgey. Followed by a lot of node tweaking. And use a mix of corner and round nodes. It might be different if you are on a drawing tablet. The in default mode uses Bézier curves which too me aren't always the most attractive curves. If you are on Windows or Linux you could try the new feature Spiro mode on the in the developers version.