Scal Tutorial Part #5 Part 2

Combine Sections Together

This is where we left off after the last tutorial.



If you look near the bottom, you will notice several pieces that are separated that maybe shouldn't be. This is really all a matter of opinion. If you like it this way cut it out. It will look gorgeous. I'm a little OCD (no laughing!) and feel the need to fix these.

Step1: While in the node format, I have dragged the lines to overlap the piece next to it where I would like them to be connected.

Step 2: Highlight both of these pieces. You do this by clicking on one, holding down the shift key while you click on the other.

Step 3: Click Path - union or control++

Look better? Now I'm going to do the same thing to the pieces above and to the left.

Now it's time to combine the sections together that I want cut out of the same color. Do you remember how to do that? Let's refresh:

While holding down on the sift key, click on all of the pieces you want cut out of the same color. After they are all highlighted, press control k. Now you can move them as one unit. Do this to all of your pieces and save! You are now ready to import into scal and cut away. Have fun.

Please feel free to ask any questions that you may have and please show me what you have made!

Scal Tutorial Part #5

Editing/Cleaning up Inkscape Files Part 1

Using Node Deletion and Line Dragging

Have you traced an image in inkscape but now it doesn't look right? It just needs a little editing.

Here is a file that I have imported into inkscape, traced and changed the view to outline.



As you can see the file has some extra lines that need cleaning up.

Step 1: Click on your image so you have the black box around it and click control+shift+k.
This should break apart your image so each piece has its own black box around it.

Step 2: Click on the extra line on the left and press delete. It should disappear.

Step 3: Zoom in on the extra line at the top and press the button on the left underneath the arrow button. This is the node button.

You can click on the top three nodes and delete them. I do this by using my arrow and drawing a box around the three nodes so that it highlights them all at the same time.

While they are highlighted, press delete. They should disappear and the line should be fixed.

Step 4: Do this for the extra line at the bottom and the big one in the middle as well. If you find that you have accidentally deleted a node that you need, go to edit - undo and try again.

Step 5: Just below the center of the firework, you will see two spiky areas.

The top spike is easy to fix. Simply highlight the extra nodes and delete them. The bottom spike is trickier. When you delete the extra nodes, it changes the shape in a bad way.

In this case, you also need to delete the extra node on the right hand side.

Now we need to fix the shape. Grab the node on the top and drag it to the right.

You can fix the right side of the line by clicking on it and dragging it to the left until it's where you want it.

After looking at the whole thing, I have decided that I don't like the way that section looks. That's ok. We can fix it. I think that I'm going to delete the three small sections and move the right line over. Don't worry, I'll show you. lol

I'm going to delete these three sections.

After I deleted these sections, I used the delete mode/drag lines method until I got the look that I liked. Remember, this is not an exact science and yours can look great but nothing like mine!

When I backed up the image, I found that I liked this one much better. You can now, combine sections to cut out of the same color and finish your file.