INKSCAPE PATH MENU (ESSENTIAL TOOLS)

foreign okay I'm gonna make this video this is going to be a video just covering the path menu and the tools that I use from the path menu this will be a follow-up to the one I made the absolute beginner's guide to using inkscape for CNC I'm going to as you can see here I typed out the different commands that I'm going to discuss this is not an all-inclusive list of the path menu options some of the path menu options I never use these are just the options I use so if you you know want to learn the other ones you can feel free to explore those and try them out and see if they work for you I've made thousands of files and never use those other options so not saying they're not useful but I'm just going to discuss the ones I use so I'm going to call it the essential path menu functions okay the first thing I'm going to do just for the purpose of discussing these is I'm going to draw a few shapes out here I'm going to grab my Square tool and draw a square then I'm gonna grab my circle tool I will draw a circle change the color of that and I'm going to lay that on top of this Square here I'm not doing anything precise here I'm just laying out a few shapes here for the purpose of discussing these these path menu options and here I'll put a stroke with my bezier tool and set that stroke color to Black and turn the fill color off okay so I've just drawn some shapes here nothing precise just kind of laid four circles on top of a square and I have a single line stroke here drawn with the bezier tool now the first item here is object to path so what object a path does is exactly what it says it does this item here if I click on this with my selection tool you see down here at your information bar that's a circle if I click on this that's a rectangle if I click on this that's a path with two nodes a single line cut so if I select the circle and I go to path object to path as you can see down here that is now no longer called a circle that's called a path with four nodes so object to path does exactly what it says it'll convert the object you've drawn into a path the next one here is stroke to path and once again that's self-explanatory this is a single line stroke if I go to my node editor you'll see here it just has two nodes one start and one finish that's just a single line it looks a little thick that's because my stroke thickness is turned up to a quarter inch but if I turn that down to the default ten thousands as you can see that's a very thin line and if that cut with the plasma cutter that'll just cut a single path now if I set that back to where it was quarter inch thickness and I were to go to my path menu and select stroke to path that's now going to convert that single line into a closed path so you see here now that has six nodes because it has rounded ends on it so stroke the path converts a single line stroke into a closed path that can be useful for you know like in this situation I'm gonna hit I'm going to go back and make it back into a single line in this instance maybe I want to cut a single line for a Bend relief on a plate but if I wanted to cut that out thicker you know a quarter inch thick I can convert that stroke to path and make that a closed path okay the next one here is Trace bitmap and I forgot to mention the reason I did these in different colors the ones I put in red are functions that I use every day the ones I put in blue are functions that I rarely use or sometimes use the two that I put asterisks beside are functions that will require a separate video to go more in depth on them okay but anyway the next item here is Trace bitmap so with Trace bitmap that would be anytime you're going to turn a raster image like a JPEG or a PNG into a path that you can edit and add into your design so what I'm going to do is file import and I've got this PNG here that I found on the internet I'm going to open that and bring that into my window here now with that selected I can go to path Trace bitmap and that'll open up this menu here and as you see here they have live updates is checked automatically when I open this up this preview window here shows you what you'll end up with when you trace it as you can see right now it's showing nothing that's because this is a yellow jpeg or PNG image and the contrast between the yellow and white is very low so in order to get that to pick up I can adjust my threshold up here and the more I go up when I get around 600 now it actually picks that yellow up and will give me a result from my Trace bit man then you'll have some more options here like Speckles that would be more for if you have a grainy image and you see that it's got little dots in here you can adjust this Speckles and that will reduce the smaller spots the higher you go the bigger the spots it'll get rid of then you have smooth Corners you can adjust that if you know you have sharp edges here it'll smooth out some of those corners and optimize that will essentially reduce the amount of nodes that you end up with in your final trace the higher you go the less nodes you'll get so once you have everything set where you want it you hit apply and now you see that's changed black over here if I click on that I can pull that off that is the new path that I just created by tracing this bitmap image now I can delete I can select this and hit backspace on my keyboard delete the image file I don't need it anymore I now have a path I can work with so that's what Trace bitmap function does Union ads two or more paths together into one path so if I have these circles here and I select two of them or all of them I can go path Union and now instead of being four individual circles that is one path with four parts it's one complete path if I go to my node editors here you'll see that as one path and that's Union those all together I'm going to hit Ctrl Z and go back okay and with Union you know you can overlay two paths select them both path Union and once again it's added those two paths together okay I'm gonna go back now difference subtracts One path from another and the path that you're subtracting from the other has to be on top the difference between one difference between union and difference with Union you can select two or more paths so you could select 10 paths and Union those together with difference you can only have two paths it will it won't work right if you try to select if I try to select all of these and then select this blue background and I hit path difference it's only going to subtract one of them so with difference you select the path you want you select the path you want to subtract it from hit path difference and that just remove that Circle from the square there if you if I hit my node editor here you can see that's one path with a hole cut out in it so if you want to put four holes in something you would first path Union those and then you could select the square path difference and now it will cut all four out as you would expect it to I'm going to hit Ctrl Z go back a couple steps okay the next function is combine combine keeps all the parts of the paths and combines them into one path but they still they s they share the same style color opacity stroke width Etc and the pass can be open or closed paths but they still retain the original path completely it's a little confusing but let's say I'm going to turn this fill color off on these shapes here and I'm going to turn a stroke on just to visually represent represent what's going on here now I'm going to turn the fill off turn the stroke on and I'm going to adjust that stroke down on all these objects just so you can see a little better so I'll put those back to the default of ten thousands okay now you see I have all these objects here I can select this whole group the circles the square this open path and I can go path combine and that is combined all those shapes into one path but they all retain their original shape on this particular group it's not as obvious but I'll show you the difference here in a minute now if I select my node editor you can see that's all One path I combined them all into one cut file or path now if I hit Ctrl Z I'll go back if I overlap these two if I go path Union as you can see it adds them together and removes the inside part where they overlapped if I select those two and go path combine that's one path but as you can see they both retain their original shape so let me hit Ctrl Z again so Union and combine are similar functions but they are not the same and don't always work the same I see sometimes in the groups people use those two terms interchangeably but they're really not they have their they have their purpose generally when I use the combined function it's because I'm working with open paths anytime I'm working with all closed vectors I only use the union and difference functions but if I have open paths like this I want to open Line relief cut in this file I will then use the combine feature to combine those all into one cut file One path now I can move this around it's all one complete path but it doesn't ruin that open line now I'll hit Ctrl Z if I try to difference or Union that open line from this Square it will lose that shape that was Union or if I tried to difference it once again it disappears you you can't use Union or difference with open paths so that is why I use combine basically only if I'm working with open lines I'll use the combine feature okay and then break apart does the same thing that it says it breaks a path apart as you can see here if I select all these and I go path combine and then I'm editing around doing whatever and I decide wait a minute I want to break that apart and move a few things around if I select this entire path and I go path break apart that's now broke that path apart into his five separate pieces and now I can move this line around you know rearrange things and then when I'm done path combine to join that all back together again so those are the main features I use in inkscape when I create my files um like I say the union indifference are the main two I use on pretty much every design combine and break apart I use when I'm working with open paths or break apart can be handy really when working with any file when you want to break it apart into its individual components um so the next the next one here would be inset like I say these are functions I don't use a lot but they can be handy inset does pretty much what it says when I select this file I'm going to duplicate it this path here and I'll change the color if I hit path inset as you can see now if I lay this back up here it it slightly inset that path every part of it just a little bit from the original now if I hit path the next function down is out set it does just the opposite it will outset that path so if I hit that a few times on the outset and then I page that down with this feature here lower selection to the Bottom now as you can see that path is slightly outset from the the original path that can be handy if you're making a back plate and you just want a slight border to stand out around your your design you can use the outset if you wanted to make sometimes if I'm working on a file I decide that you know maybe just these little Rays I want to be smaller so then I could take this I could use my path break apart feature to break it apart I can select just the Rays and then I could go path inset and make the raise a little bit smaller but keep the sun shape the same so those can be handy tools for editing changing details making a back plate I'm gonna hit Ctrl Z and go back a few steps here I'm going to delete this one now the linked offset the next one I have listed off here essentially does what the outset does the difference is it's kind of infinitely adjustable we're out set if I want to make a bigger back plate or a bigger outline for Fawn or whatever it is I have to keep hitting that command and adjust it by steps a little bit at a time if I use the linked offset feature path linked offset once you hit it it doesn't look like it did anything if you'll come over here to your node editor and click on node editor you'll see it now has one node at the top now you can grab that node and pull that up and you can adjust that out as thick as you want it if I change the color here you'll see that's actually a separate path being created from your original path it's not adjusting your original it's adjusting this linked outset linked offset sorry so you can adjust that as far as you want you know say I want a big outline like that around this path once you're done with the linked offset the inset and the outset when you do those it's already a path it's just adjusting your original path with the linked offset when you're done adjusting that this isn't a path yet this is just a linked offset once you're done you're going to want to go back up to path and use that First Command object to path to convert this into a path so now I've created my linked offset converted it to a path I can now work with that and have you know I select these I have two paths here then if I wanted to cut that Sun out I can go back to this difference command that we discussed path difference and that now cut that out so you know that's where these different functions come in simplify is not something I use very often but simplify will essentially reduce the amount of nodes that you see here as you can see when you when you make a linked offset it'll generally have some extra nodes that need cleaned up that it's not the cleanest function I would personally go through with the node editor and delete these individually and adjust it and clean it up but if you're in a hurry and you're not super concerned with the exact shape path simplify as you can see simplified that path drastically reduce the amount of nodes there but it does kind of play with the Contours a little like these were sharp Corners before I hit that and now as you can see these are kind of rounded out you know they kind of lost their shape a little bit it's not horrible on this particular design some designs will be worse than others but that's one you can you can use it if if the results work for you great if they don't you'll have to go into the node editor and do it the other way but like I say as you can see here I went back see these Corners are Sharp I select this path simplify now as you can see it's rounded these out it's it's greatly reduced to node count and if this result works for you that's great it's just an option you can try out you can use it if it works for you if not it was just worth discussing the last item here is path effects the path effects I'm not even going to attempt to go over that'll have to be a separate video because the pathfx menu has so many options and features that I could never cover it in one video but if I select any path and go path uh path effects here it'll open this window up here which doesn't look like anything with the path still selected if you come down here and click this plus button this will open up your path effect menu and gives you a whole slew of options here of adjustments and features different things you can do you can just deform your your path you can fillet the corners you can do all kinds of stuff but like I say this would absolutely require a separate video to cover all the features here is even these when you open them up have adjustments and steps inside of them so there's no way I'm going to cover that at this moment but essentially that is if you're getting started out this list of path commands here are the ones that I use I would call them the essential path menu items I use these every day the red ones every day the blue ones sometimes um familiarize yourself with them play around with them and remember control Z is always your best friend or edit uh undo right here that's what control Z does it basically takes you that back a step so you know you can play around with your designs you're not going to screw anything up you can always go back undo the command you did if you screw something up but those are the items I use on a daily basis to create every design you've seen on Bad Dog Metal Works hopefully this helps you out if there's something I can cover better drop me a message in the comments uh don't forget to like And subscribe thanks for watching

Channel: Bad Dog Metalworks

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Id: KHN_5l2udk8

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023