This section of the tutorial will cover the Transform Menu: Move, Scale, Rotate, Skew, and Matrix. First, select the object you intend to transform. This might be a piece of your schematic or the entire drawing. Then choose Object -- Transform from the top menu or press Shift + Ctrl+ M. Under "Move" you have horizontal and vertical options. To the far right you have your choice of units: pixel, point, pc (which I can only hope doesn't stand for parsec (3.26 light years or 30.9 trillion km)), millimeters, meters, inches, feet, and centimeters. Choose a unit and fill in the amount of horizontal and/or vertical movement. Use the arrow keys to raise and lower the amount if you wish. Make sure the box next to "Relative move" is checked, otherwise you will not be moving the entire shape as one piece. Finally, click "Apply." Another option for moving shapes is not to use the Transform menu at all but to use the hand cursor and mouse to drag it or arrow keys to nudge it once it has been selected. The "Scale" function is incredibly useful to adjust a schematic accidentally drawn to the wrong proportions or to shrink an entire drawing to fit on the page. This has options to the far right as well. Shrink or expand a drawing by a certain percentage or to a certain number of pixels or parsecs. You can set one dimension and then select "Scale proportionally" to shrink or expand the entire schematic exactly the way it looks, or you can select only the sleeves, say, and reduce the height by 50% if, for instance, you forgot you were using one grid square to mean 2 inches instead of only 1. You must click "Apply" to see the results. "Rotate" and "Skew" are two other useful options for designers looking to adjust schematics or transform copied objects. They are fairly straightforward so I won't go into them further. "Matrix" can flip and stretch the drawing. "A" stretches the width, "B" stretches widthwise and slants (positive inputs slant upward, negative slant downward), "C" stretches lengthwise and slants (positive inputs slant to the right, negative slant to the left), "D" stretches lengthwise, E and F may be for shifting perspective in 3D drawings. They return text boxes to their original positions and don't appear to affect the transformed (2D) schematic itself. Next up: Using nodes to control curves. Read the Tutorial from Part 1 here. (Scroll down for earlier entries.)
1 Comment
|
Hi! I'm Kangath---knit designer, musician, writer, and mother Click here to join the Kangath Knits email list
for insider updates and special deals. Subscribe to
Kangath Knits: Ruth Roland is a top Baton Rouge, LA music lesson instructor on TryMusicLessons.com! Good ReadsAmy Herzog Designs
canaryknits dull roar Knit and Tonic Linda Marveng needled Ramblings The Sexy Knitter Sheep to Shawl Trappings and Trinkets Two Sides of the Same Stitch Yarn Harlot Archives
February 2018
Categories
All
|