On 1/7/11 02:02, Gary Hawkins wrote:
I wonder if it's possible to have a autofill added to Inkscape in a future upgrade. This would be a boon to die cutter users.
by autofill I mean, if you draw a shape (or shapes) there would be a button (ideal) or a menu command to click that would fit as many of the shape(s) to the page as possible in the size drawn. so if I were to draw a star & triangle at 3 inch X 3 Inch each clicking the autofill button/command would put 9 images on a A4 page (3 across by 3 down)
I'm assuming this is not something you can do now (I use 0.47 as it's the only version that Signcut recommend to use with a digital die cutter)
Existing tools to fill an area (or arrange objects) based on the (visual) bounding box:
1) Tiled clones: You can specify an area (Width, height) for tiled clones (alternative option to the number of rows and columns). Symmetry P1 with default settings will fill the area, only drawback afaict is that it includes the column/row which is cut off at the right/lower border of the area (-> seamless tiling?). Delete the original after applying the tiled clones, if you need independent copies instead of clones (it will unlink the clones).
2) Arrange existing objects/duplicates: 'Object > Rows & Columns'
3) Maybe of interest: N-up layout extension for Inkscape. http://www.greygreen.org/blog/code/python/inkscape/inkscape-nup-layout.html https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/169955
I'm not aware of an extension that packs an area with a selected object (shape, path, group, etc.), optimized based on the effective shape/outline instead of arranging the bounding boxes without (or with defined) overlaps.
hth, ~suv