10 Must-Know Features for Editing Paths in Inkscape

in the next 10 minutes or so we're going to cover 10 essential path editing features by using them to create this square knot illustration to start I'll go to the square as a rectangles tool here and create a rectangle I'm going to turn off the fill color of this by clicking the Red X down here now give it a black Stroke by holding shift and clicking the black color swatch I'll also right click the stroke width value here and make it a bit wider two should be good now if I go to the node tool up here I don't currently have access to the rectangle's nodes I can resize it and round the corners but I can't really modify its shape and that's because I need to turn the rectangle into a path first this leads us to the first and most important path editing feature object to path to use object to path I can go up to the path menu and choose object to path now I have access to the nodes and can modify them however I want using the node tool but actually do want to keep it rectangular for the moment so I'll press Ctrl z a couple times to put the notes back where they were what I want to do instead is round a couple of the corners of this path this leads to the next feature the corners path effects to use it I first need to open the path effects dialog by going to path path effects then I can click the plus button at the bottom of the dialog and click the icon for Corners here with this effect if I start increasing the radius parameter in here it will round all of the corners by the same amount [Music] and down here I can change the mode that the effect uses the default mode is fillet which rounds the corners I can also do inverse fillet which is the opposite of fillet the chamfer mode bevels the corners and I can change the number of steps it uses with the chamfer steps parameter finally I can do inverse chamfer which is the opposite of chamfer I want to round the corners so I'll put it back on fillet mode and I only want to round the top right and bottom left Corners so I'll set radius back to zero to route a particular corner I can use the node tool to drag these green diamond handles at the corner to round more than one corner at a time I can select one node by dragging a selection box over it then select another node by holding shift and dragging a selection box over it now I can round them together by the same amount I'm going to drag along the bottom line here as far as it will go then release now before continuing I want to finalize the path effect by doing object to path this gives me access to all the nodes and makes it so I can't accidentally change the rounding of the corners I'll now go to the select tool click the path to show the rotation handles grab one of the corner rotation handles and while holding Ctrl to restrict the angle I'll rotate it counterclockwise until it says in the status bar that it has been rotated negative 45 degrees then I'll click the path again to get back to the skill handles grab a skill handle while holding and shorts maintain the width to high ratio I'll scale it down pretty small and move it out of the way next I'm going to create the Rope path first I'll go to the squares rectangles tool and create a rectangle here then I'll go to the serbos and Ellipsis tool and create an ellipse overlapping the right side of the rectangle and I want to Center these horizontally so I'll select them both open the Align distribute dialog with this button up here and click this button to Center them on the horizontal axis I now want to turn these objects into a single path for this I'll use another path editing feature called the union path operation which is located in the path menu if I click this the selected shapes become a single path and because they were overlapping they now share a single stroke I'll also give it a fill color like the Stark Brown here now bring the stroke width back down to one I also don't need the line at the left side of the path here so I'll go to the node tool select the two left nodes and click this button up here one more thing I would do is round these two corners using the corners path effects that should work now I'll finalize it [Music] next I want to take this first path I created and copy it along this spoon shaped path for this I'll use the pattern long path path effect first I need to select the small path and copy it into the clipboard with Ctrl C now select the big path click the plus button in the path effects dialog and click the icon for pattern long path and here I'll click this paste path button by default with the pattern copies parameters set to single stretched the stick to copied path and stretch the single copy of it along the entire big path I can also do a single copy without stretching repeated copies along the path and repeated copies that get stretched in order to fill up the entire path this is what I want however the copies are spaced out too far apart to fix this I'll first zoom in by holding down the control key and scrolling up the mouse wheel then I'll decrease the spacing parameter over here until the copies are lined up [Music] perfect I can also change the width of the pattern if I want as well as play around with the offsets all right that looks pretty good so I'm going to duplicate it by right clicking it and choosing duplicate then I'll press the H key to flip the duplicate horizontally now move it to the right while holding Ctrl to keep them horizontally aligned right there should be good now give this one a lighter brown fill next I want to make it so the light brown rope appears to go underneath the dark brown rope at the center here to do this I'm first going to right click the dark brown rope and duplicate it then I'll go to the pen tool and create a diamond-shaped path here that covers the intersection of the two ropes I'll create one down here as well [Music] now I want to turn this into a single path by selecting them both and going to path Union now that this is a single path I can use it to cut out the parts of the dark brown rope duplicate that the path is overlapping this is the function of the next PATH editing feature the intersection path operation to use it I first need to hold shift and select the Rope path then I go to path intersection this leaves me with just the part of the bottom path that was being overlapped by the top path I'll change the fill color of this just so I can see it better the next thing I want to do is use this path to hide the parts of the light brown rope that are under it however the feature I'll use for this doesn't like Strokes very much however there are Strokes in the top path it will leave gaps there in the bottom path to fix this I'll first need to use another feature called stroke to path stroke to path basically turns the stroke of a path into a separate path and to use it I can go to path stroke to path if the path also had a fill color structure path creates a group consisting of the stroke path and the fill path I can double click the group to enter into it and modify the individual paths if I want however what I want to do is turn the stroke path and the fill path into a single path so that it takes up the entire area of the group to do this I'll first select a different object to get back outside of the group then I'll select the group again right click it and choose ungroup now I can Union the two pads into a single pack together now that the stroke problem has been taken care of I can finally use this path to hide the parts of the light round rope for this I'll use a feature called inverse clipping first I'll hold shift and select the light brown rope then I'll go to object clip set inverse clip now those parts of the light brown rope are invisible making it appear to be underneath the dark brown rope and giving the ropes an intertwined appearance as you can see in the path effects dialog inverse clipping actually uses a path Effect called Power clip I also had the option to do normal clipping by unchecking inverse clip down here this hides all of the parts of the bottom path that weren't overlapped by the top path but of course I want the opposite of this so I'll reach that inverse clip next to add a little bit of detail to the ropes I'll add a few small lines going across the pattern path here for this I'll first go to the pin tool click here hold Ctrl to keep the line horizontal click over here then right click to finish the path now I'll go to the select tool and duplicate the path then press the down arrow key a few times then I'll duplicate both of these and move them down some while holding Ctrl then I'll duplicate all four of these and move them down eight paths should be enough I also want to put equal spacing between these pads which I can do by selecting them all going to the line distribute dialog and clicking this button next I want to combine these paths this brings us to the next feature which is the combined path operation combine is similar to Union and that it will turn the selected objects into a single path however combined makes the object's sub Paths of a single path meaning that their nodes are still fully editable for example if I create a couple overlapping objects select them both and go to path combine they become a single path as shown by the bounding box around them but the original nodes of the objects are still accessible and I can actually do another path operation break apart or split path which is similar to turn the sub paths into separate paths again okay with that long explanation out of the way I'll select all the lines I created and do combine on them now I'm going to click the path to get the rotation handles and rotate at negative 45 degrees so that it matches the rotation of the pattern path then I'll move it to about right here next I want to cut off the parts of this path that are outside of the pattern path for this I'll use the final path editing feature that we'll look at which is the cut path path operation first I need to duplicate the pattern path then I'll hold shift and select the path of lines and go to path cut path uses the stroke of the top path to cut through all of The Strokes of the bottom path and separates them so now all of these are separate paths that have each been cut into two pieces and I can now select and delete all the outside pieces and I want to select all of these pads here and do path combine then I'll copy this new pattern path with Ctrl C ycle one of the ropes go to the path effects dialog choose pattern along path in the list and click the paste path button I'll do the same for the other one [Music] finally I'll finalize all the path effects and that's it for the 10 path editing features that we'll learn today if you would like to learn some more be sure to click one of the videos on the screen thanks for watching [Music] thank you

Channel: Sweater Cat Designs

Views: 12,636

Keywords: vector, graphic design, drawing, overlapping, interconnected, entwine, link, chain

Id: o57WGkfgzNY

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2023