Inkscape Tutorial: Vector Gauge Icons

this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how to create these vector gauge icons using Inkscape and at any point in this tutorial you could look down at the bottom left hand side of my screen to see which mouse clicks and keystrokes I'm using so we'll minimize this and get started the first thing we'll do in Inkscape is set our view to custom and then we'll zoom in at a hundred percent then we'll open up the align and distribute menu with this button right here make sure you have less selected chosen from that drop-down and then we'll open up our edit objects colors gradients and Stroke menu with this button right here so the first thing we're going to do in Inkscape is create a circle so let's come over to the circles and ellipses tool and we'll come over to the canvas and hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle like that and once you've done that we can go back to our we can go to our select tool and we're gonna make the width and the height of this 335 by 335 let's actually turn the lock icon on which will keep the perspective so once you've done that come over to the W column right here and let's highlight whatever is in there and then just type in 3 3 5 and then hit enter and then we could take the opacity of this and drop this down about in half and then we're gonna take this circle right here then we're gonna right click it and go to duplicate and we'll turn that red and we'll lower it one step with this button right here lower selection one step so that it goes behind the Reds the other black circle and I'm gonna hold ctrl on the keyboard and I'll grab this top right arrow and click and drag to scale this out until the width of it is around maybe maybe around 400 pixels and you can see what the width is up here in this box while you're scaling it so let me do that again I'm gonna hold ctrl on a click and drag this out and watch how the width changes in this box up here I'm gonna get that tool it's about 400 it doesn't have to be exactly 400 401 that that works too and once you get that out to there I'm just going to take this this arrow on the right over here and just pull this out until that reaches about maybe 440 like that and then we could take this black circle in the middle and we could right click that and go to duplicate and then hold shift in the keyboard and click on the red object and go to path difference then we could take this black circle right here hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and click and drag the scale this in about that much and what we'll do next is let's go to our rectangles tool and click on that and let's just click and drag and create a thin rectangle going over the center of that black circle in the middle right there like that about that high you want this thing to be really tall or vertically you want this to be taller than the entire graphic like that now we'll go back to our select tool will turn this lock icon off and change the width of this whatever this is right here just erase that and type in 8.5 and hit enter and then hold shift in the keyboard actually let's turn this blue first so we could differentiate it from the other red object turn that blue and then hold shift in the keyboard and click on the black circle so we have them both selected and we're going to Center them on the horizontal and vertical axis with these two buttons right here and then we can click off of the graphic to deselect everything so let's click on just this blue rectangle now and we're gonna click it a second time to get our rotation handles and then hold ctrl on the keyboard and grab one of these corner handles right here and just click and drag it around like that and you can see what happens it takes it around in a circle we're gonna bring it back to this starting position right here and while holding ctrl the entire time we do this we're just gonna hit the spacebar it's gonna make a copy I'm gonna bring this over one step and then hit the spacebar again and then over hit the spacebar again remember we're holding ctrl the entire time we're doing this put that right there and I'm gonna put one right there and that'll be the end point and then I'll come back around and put them on this side as well put that there put that there and for the last one we don't have to press spacebar we can just leave it there we can just let go of everything and there you have it so what we're gonna do next is hold shift in the keyboard and click on each of these blue rectangles so we have them all selected like that and we're gonna unify them together by going to path Union and I'm just going to turn them green just so we can see just so we can make sure that we unify we grabbed all of them when we unified them I missed this one right here but I did they're not purpose I'm actually not going to use this one I'm gonna get rid of that I want this green one to be the ending point of this of this red shape and once we get there we'll just click on this green object and then hold shift and click on the red object and go to path difference and then we'll go to path break apart and then click off of the graphic to deselect everything and let's take this big piece right here click on that and then just press Delete on your keyboard to get rid of that we're gonna do the same thing to these pieces down here let's click and drag over those little red pieces and then press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of them and what we'll do next is we're gonna create another rectangle to look like we just did a second ago a tall thin rectangle going through the entire graphic pretty tall like that and then we'll go back to our select tool but this time around the width of this is not going to be 8.5 it's going to be 4 so just hit 4 and hit enter and then hold shift in the keyboard and click on the black circle and Center that on the vertical and horizontal axis and then click off of it to deselect everything and then we're gonna do the same thing again we're gonna click on the green rectangle click it a second time to get the rotation handles hold control and grab one of the corner arrows and rotate it around and press spacebar at every gap to create a copy in each gap and we're holding remember we're holding ctrl the entire time we do this and for the last one we don't have to press spacebar we can just leave it there and let go click off of the graphic to deselect everything and then click on this green object to the far left hold shift and go and click on the rest of the green objects so we could select them all and then go to path Union and I'm just going to turn that blue to make sure I selected all of them no I missed that one I'm sure to hold shift and click on that one this is you can do this too if you accidently miss one of those and then just unified together path Union and now we have them all set right there so let's take this black circle right here and with that selected let's just go to edit and duplicate and I'm gonna turn that green first and then I'll hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and just click and drag this circle out until it's a little bit smaller than the interior of the red shape we want some padding in there maybe about this much like that and then we'll right-click this and go to duplicate we'll turn that copy red now we'll hold ctrl and shift and scale this in about that much and then hold shift and click on the green circle so we have them both selected and go to path difference and then we can hold shift and click on this these blue spokes here and go to path intersection and what we can do now is we have our gauge indicator our little increments right here on the top we don't need them on the bottom so we're gonna get rid of the bottom part to do that we're just gonna grab the Bezier pen we're gonna start out here to the left click and we're just gonna draw a shape a line going through the center of those and then come back around the outside and connect it back to the starting point to create that shape then we go back to our select tool hold shift in the keyboard and click on the blue objects and go to path difference and what we could do now is let's click and drag over this entire thing and let's bring the opacity all the way up and let's make this one color just black or maybe 90% gray just for now and then we'll click off of the graphic to deselect everything so what we're gonna do now is we're going to color in these um these progress bars right here and we're going to use we're going to use a gradient going from blue to green only we're not going to create an actual gradient in Inkscape we're gonna use individual colors to keep this consistent with a flat sort of design so let's take this circle right here and then right click that and go to duplicate and let's put this off to the left and let's make this the shade of blue that we want the blue side to be I'm just gonna come down here I'm going to choose this shade of blue down here I believe that it's zero zero c c FF go ahead and click that I'll right click that and go to duplicate and then I'll hold ctrl and click and drag this copy all the way off to the right maybe right here and then I'll choose the shade of green that I want that to be maybe that shade right there and now that we have our two our two ends of the color spectrum we want to use we have to count how many of these increments are in here so these black stripes right here going around the outside we're gonna want to count how many are there as one two three four five six seven eight nine okay so there's nine increments there on your screen it may be different just make sure to count it and whatever that number is subtracted from to subtract to from it and in my instance it would be seven so what we're gonna do now is with that information I'm gonna click and drag over both of these to select them both and go to extension generate from path and interpolate go to interpolate and I'm gonna set this up with the exponent being zero interpolation steps being the number of increments you counted here minus two so there was nine increments minus two is going to be seven steps interpolation method one duplicate n paths yes interpolate style yes and let's go ahead and click on live preview to see how it looks and that looks pretty good so we can go ahead and click apply and then close out of that and what we're gonna do now is click on each one of these increments and make them the same shade as these down here so let's click on the first one and we'll grab our dropper tool and click on this blue shade and then we'll go back to our Select tool we'll click on the second one right here and go back to the dropper and click on the second shade and to make this a little quicker so we don't have to keep clicking on the select tool and the dropper tool over and over I'm going to use the keyboard shortcuts so to get to the select tool I'm going to press f1 on the keyboard and then click on that shape and to get to the dropper I'll press f7 on the keyboard and then go ahead and click on that the third one in and then I'm going to keep my fingers over the f1 + f7 q the entire time I'm doing this because it just makes it easier and quicker I'll press f1 again go here f7 make that the same shade as the fourth circle in f1 click that one f7 I believe this is the fifth one in f1 click that one f7 and that is the sixth circle in and you get the idea we're going to go along the line and fill in each increment with its corresponding circle like that and once you've gotten to there we can click and drag over this entire thing and just delete that press Delete on the keyboard and that's that's gone and what we did there is we created a gradient without creating an actual gradient these are all individual colors it's just giving you the appearance the illusion of a gradient so the one last final step that we have to do is add the needle to this gauge here so in order to do that I'm going to come over to this the squares and rectangles tool and I'm just gonna click and drag I'm gonna start it up to about here I'm just gonna click and drag down like that and make a thin little rectangle going down into that circle right there maybe about that much like that we want this to be thin to start like that then we can go to our select tool and hold shift in the keyboard and click on that black circle and center that onto the vertical axis and then click off of the graphic to deselect everything so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna zoom in on this portion right here you could press plus or minus on your keyboard I'm just gonna hold ctrl and roll upwards on the mouse wheel to zoom in so I could have a better look at this tiny little green rectangle and what we want to do with this rectangles we want to make the base of the needle wider than the top of the needle and a nice little shortcut to get that to achieve that would be to first can this - a path so let's go to our edit pads buy notes so we can see that this is not a path yet this is still a square or rectangle in the eyes of Inkscape so in order to change that we're just gonna go to path object to path and now that's a path with four different nodes that we can manipulate individually and what we're going to do now is we're going to click over these we're going to click and drag over those bottom two nodes in the bottom and up here in the toolbar there should be a little icon that says show transformation handles for selected nodes you can go ahead and click on that and it's going to give you these little handles here that it gives us when we're scaling objects where you could scale these little nodes individually and once you have that we're going to hold ctrl and shift and I'm gonna grab one of these arrow handles and just scale this out maybe about that much let me zoom out see how that looks and you see the we that's how we achieve that desired effect by making the base wider than the top so once we've done that we can go back to the Select tool and let's right-click this and go to duplicate and we'll just make this a different color for now I'm just going to turn that red and I'm going to flip that vertically with this button right here and then hold shift and click on the green shape beneath it so we have them both selected and we're to come down to this button over here in the align and distribute panel that says align top edges of objects to the bottom edge of the anchor and go ahead and click on that and then we're going to group them together up here with this button group selected objects and then we could hold shift and click on the black circle and make sure we have that centered on the vertical and horizontal axis and then let's ungroup them with this button right here ungroup selected objects click off of the graphic to deselect everything and then grab this little red piece here on the bottom and then just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and what that did is that gave us that the needle the the endpoint of the needle being at the center of the circle which is going to be important for what we do next so let's click on this green needle and let's click that a second time to get the rotation handles and we're going to take this little crosshair in the center I'm gonna hold ctrl on the keyboard and click and drag that crosshair down until snaps onto the bottom of the green shape like that and then I'm going to make this the same shade of black or gray that the circle is and let's press 1 on the keyboard to zoom out and you can see we now have a needle that you can move around relative to its center the relative to the center of that circle in the middle of the gauge and if you want to have this needle go in exact increments as these lines you could just hold ctrl and click and drag and it'll take it exactly it'll be exactly aligned with each increment on the grid so let's say you want to create several of these icons for a website you want to show varying degrees of whatever it is we can click and drag over all of this right click duplicate the hold ctrl and click and drag this off to the right and click off of this to deselect everything I'll click that once and then click at a second time to get the rotation handles I'm just going to hold ctrl and rotate this around to the end point let me make this a little closer and we'll do the same thing with this one we'll right-click it duplicate bring this over here click on that click it a second time to get the rotation handles hold ctrl and scale it around to the starting point and then you could go and export each one of these graphics individually and use them as needed so that's one way that you can create a vector gauge icon using Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 28,361

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners

Id: VWFn1LOIScQ

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2016