Trying to draw rectangle and it will not stay. Shows up as dashed lines and disappears as soon as you click on it a second time

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

It sounds like the last time you drew a rectangle, you either made it transparent, or removed fill and stroke, later. The dotted line is called the "bounding box". You will see it around any and everything that you select. But for some reason, the fill and stroke have either become transparent, or been removed. Try this.

Make a new rectangle, and leave it selected. Object menu > Fill and Stroke > etc. (http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... butes.html) Or more easily, click any color on the palette to give color to the rectnagle's fill. Then Shift + click a color (usually black) to add a black stroke.

For some reason (which I don't understand) Inkscape is set by default, to give the next object you draw (ellipse, rectangle, star, path, whatever) the same style (which includes color and transparency) as the last object you drew. You can change that behavior if you like.

Draw a new rectangle and give it whatever style (color, stroke, transparency) that you want it to always have when you first draw it. Leave it selected. Inkscape Preferences > Tools > Shapes > Rectangle > This tool's own style. Then click "Take from selection" bar. You can do that for any or all tools!

There are other things that could cause this problem though. This is the most common, in my experience, but if it doesn't fix it, let us know, and we'll help you investigate other possibilities

Thanks it was a fill and stroke issue. Now that it is drawing I can import drawing but when you use path- trace bitmap- o k it doesn't change so you can delete pixel dwg.

Uuummmm....you're having trouble with Trace Bitmap now? (dwg = drawing?) Or is there a file format DWG?

Sometimes it's hard to see the result of the trace because it's right on top of the raster and may look identical to it. After you click ok, watch the status bar. It should start with Image: "Image: 120 x 150..." (or whatever size the import is). After you click OK, the status bar will say "Trace: start tracing....". If it's a large image, or you're doing more than say 10 scans (multiple scans) it might take a moment before it finishes tracing. And it could actually take a minute or 2 if it's really large or complex. When the trace starts, the OK button will become grayed out, so you can't click it again. So when OK button returns to its original appearance, the trace is finished, and the status bar will say "Path (1000 nodes)..." (or however many nodes it has). And the trace result is automatically selected. You could move it to the side, to be able to see it more clearly, or select the imported image more easily. Or you could do Alt + click + click to select the original import, then Delete.

If I've misunderstood, please clarify the issue

Hey guys,

I had the exact same problem, but couldn't fix it by changing the fill or the outline; no matter what I tried I was only getting the bounding box.

A drastic solution that solves the problem is deleting the preferences' file. This is located here (on a Fedora system)

/home/[your name]/.config/inkscape/preferences.xml

Hope this will help others with the same problem

Well, I guess the solution to the problem was in my first reply above. Years since then, I've written a tutorial explaining all the things to check when a tool doesn't seem to work, or is drawing transparent objects. http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/inde ... article=18