Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

Inkscape 2 outline.

Tricky common issues, solved. See the attached practice files at the bottom of this page!

Cutting a part of a path off

ISSUE: a thick piece of plywood or another material cuts through in most places, but one or two spots only cuts *most* of the way through.

One possible SOLUTION:

            - Get rid of all of the design except the part of the path that you want to cut again.

ISSUE: A kid draws something to be cut out as a sticker, but there are a lot of crossing lines. These *often* will cause tearing in the vinyl material, and even if they do not will be harder to keep together after they are cut.

One possible SOLUTION:

            - Play with the path combining tools to add, subtract, ect to get ONE object.

Letters in a sticker or cut flowers

ISSUE: want parts inside to stay put after cut.

One possible SOLUTION:

            - Drawing to make floating pieces stay attached and look good doing it.

            - Eg: Letters OR paper cut flowers in new years design.

                        -Make it symmetrical.

                        -Make it curved.

                        -Make the new lines connect with and extend those that already exist.

ISSUE: fitting more things into an area and reusing used materials.

One possible SOLUTION--or set of guidlines to help:

            - First make the canvas the size of the piece.

            - Then place the missing/used spots on the canvas

                        (draw rectangles etc, use a ruler!)

            -To fit more objects often fit the longest flatest edges together.

            -use the rotate and flip (if it's OK to flip) tools then adjust angle manually

            -(Duplicate before messing up!) (unless there are too many nodes and it slows down your computer) (SAVE! sometimes save with a new name so you can go back easily later if you don't notice a mistake till later)       

Mythical creature exercise

ISSUE: want to use two parts of two things to make one thing

            - attaching two paths to make one path/object.

            - Eg: the Hermes head. The trace tool worked for each half best under different tracing conditions.

One possible SOLUTION:

            - Use the conditions that work best for each area by combining them after.