Hello everybody,

I'm quite new to Inkscape and wonder how to draw a brick arch, i.e. how to position bitmaps along a curve.

Is there any tutorial which explains this?

Thanks and regards

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

Well, it might not be so easy. You'll want to look into Pattern Along Path. Note that there are both an extension and an LPE, and the decision about which one to use, depends on whether you need to use groups or not. There are probably quite a few tutorials for PAP.

However, it won't work on raster images (assuming that's what you mean by "bitmap"). You'll have to either draw it all vector, or find a photo of a brick arch. And depending on the size of the final image, and/or the size of the bricks, PAP might not work at all, because it tends to create some distortion....so under certain circumstances, the brick could look slightly curved.

But if you could give us a little more info about what you need, maybe someone can come up with something. Do you have an example we could look at?

Thank you for your answer.

Well, I have a few old scetches of railway buildings which I'd like to turn into models. What I've done so far is transfering the drawings from the book into a line drawing in Inkscape. I'v created a seamless brick texture using gimp with which I filled the walls. The problem is now the arches above the windows and doors. I have the radii of the arches and thought it would be possible to place bitmas of single bricks, which I cut out of the brick photo I created the bick texture, around the arch line.

I will produc a screen copy tomorrow to illustrate this ...

Thanks and regards

Hi

Some examples to go with brynn's text:


Click image for larger version.

A lot of tutorials on the "pattern on path" on the net, tiled clones are covered as well, they can be a little intimidating for a "newbies" like us!
If you need any guidance we are her to help you.

RGDS Ragnar

helseidel wrote:Hello everybody, I'm quite new to Inkscape and wonder how to draw a brick arch, i.e. how to position bitmaps along a curve. Is there any tutorial which explains this? Thanks and regards

The scatter extension works with bitmaps, although whether this will help you in your project is not sure, since it will not actually bend the image.
look here as well for more instructions from yours truly on how to do this.
Here's a not very well annotated demo.


Also note that the scatter extension is picky about the z-order and/or the selection order of things given to it!

You know, I think I might have been wrong about not being able to use a raster image. I think you CAN use a raster image for the pattern!