-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:inkscape-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Maximilian Albert Sent: woensdag 26 maart 2008 14:11 To: inkscape Subject: [Inkscape-devel] GSoC08: Tech Drawing ideas (comments very welcome)
Hi,
unfortunately I haven't yet received any response to my other emails, so I don't know if there is a potential mentor for any of them or if they are suitable for a SoC project at all.
!!!! I replied! :(
In any case, I have written up some thoughts regarding the facilitation of geometric constructions/tech drawing in Inkscape. They can be found here:
http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~malbert/tech_drawing/
It's a draft and not complete yet (but all I could manage alongside studying for my graduation exam). I would very much appreciate any input/comments/suggestions/criticism. Would any of the potential mentors be willing to supervise such a project?
Thank you very much in advance for any feedback, Max
I've been using Cadence for the last couple of days. What I like a lot is the "ruler" tool that creates rules that stay on-canvas until you press the 'remove all rulers' key. It snaps to rulers aswell. Very handy to construct things! Basically the tool works like the pen tool: click somewhere, then move the pointer and a ruler will be drawn from the clicked point to the mouse pointer, immediately showing values along it. You can set the ruler to 'all angles' or only 'diagonal' (0, 45, 90, ... degrees), and even orthogonal but i don't know how that works, I guess orthogonal to the object selected when you click on a point that touches that path...? Clicking again will fixate the ruler on canvas from the 1st to the 2nd clicked point. Then you can draw a second ruler if you'd like. If you are interested and don't understand what I am saying, I can make a quick mockup of what I mean.
The second thing was already mentioned in another context on this list: move nodes while maintaining angles. Consider a rectangle. When dragging one node, it changes the angles of the rectangle right? What if the other nodes would move, so that moving the dragged node to the new position would *not* change the angles? For a rectangle this means that the 2 nodes left and right of the dragged node move along with it, such that the object stays a rectangle. This can be very handy for polygons with angled lines and things. Again, I can make a small mockup. I don't know if there is mathematic papers or things to be found on this topic, as solving for all nodes can become complex maybe, or maybe in the very general case, it still only concerns the two nodes left and right of the dragged node......... As you can read, I haven't thought about this too much.
The ruler tool I really like and use a *lot* and start to miss it in Inkscape... I think you can 'copy' most of the code of the pentool, and scratch all the code to make bezier things, because you only need straight lines!
Cheers, Johan