2D Digital Design. Introduction to Inkscape

Transcription

1 2D Digital Design 1

2 Overview of 2D Digital Design Skills A few basic skills in a design program will go a long way. In this tutorial, you will learn how to: 1. Set your page size to match the machine your are designing for 2. Zoom in and out, and navigate your drawing. 3. Create a Square, Circle, Star, Line; scale them and manipulate them on the screen 4. Understand what a vector drawing is and what a pixilated drawing is and how it affects your design 5. Set the proper line widths and fills so that the machine you are designing for will understand your design 6. Understand the basic file types used in 2D design and how to save your design file in those formats. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 2

3 Overview of 2D Digital Design Skills A few basic skills in a design program will go a long way. In this tutorial, you will learn how to: 7. Create novel shapes using merging/welding, intersec<on, and subtrac<on tools 8. Create and manipulate text. 9. Import a pixilated image and trace it to create a vector drawing 10. Understand the posi<ve and nega<ve spaces in your design and how that combines with the tool path/cut path to create your final object 11. Use Layers, Grouping, and Order to make a complicated design easier to navigate and manipulate. 12. Use alignment tools to make design easier 13. Use Nodes to manipulate objects MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 3

4 2D Design Programs vs 3D Design Programs In 2D Design programs you design on a page that is governed by X and Y coordinates. You will be designing with only 2D and 1D objects. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 4

5 2D Design Programs vs 3D Design Programs In 3D Design programs you design in a space that includes X, Y, and Z coordinates. In this space you will be designing with 3D, 2D, and 1D objects MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 5

6 Homework As you go through this tutorial save examples of the work that you do prac<cing each skill. This can be screen shots or saved files in the.svg or.pdf format. Upload these files to your porbolio website. Acer you have finished the tutorial, design a key chain Inkscape to be cut out on the laser cuder. The key chain must fit in a 4 inch x 4 inch square and must use both the vector and raster func<ons of the laser cuder (contain both vector drawings and pixel graphics). Remember that vector drawings must have a stroke width of inches (and for the sake of this assignment, be black) for a the laser cuder to recognize them as vectors and that all key chains need a hole for the key chain ring to adach. When your design is done and you have double checked your stroke widths, save your file as a.pdf and as a.svg then upload it to your porbolio website. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 6

7 Installing Inkscape To Download and Install Inkscape: 1. Go to hdps://inkscape.org/en/download/ to download Inkscape 2. Once at the site locate your opera<ng system (for windows users instruc<ons on how to determine if you have a 32 bit or 64 bit system are located here hdp://windows.microsoc.com/en- us/windows/32- bit- and- 64- bit- windows#1tc=windows- 7) 3. If you have a Windows machine or Linux machine choose the first available installer and click on it to download it. Acer downloading it open the installer (if it doesn t open automa<cally) and follow the prompts to install Inkscape. 4. If you have Mac computer the process is slightly more complicated. Follow the instruc<ons on the download site carefully to successfully install Inkscape on your computer. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 7

8 Setting Your Page Size and Units 1. Open Inkscape 2. Go to the File Menu 3. Scroll Down to Document Proper<es 4. Select Document Proper<es MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 8

9 Setting Your Page Size and Units 1. Go to the Units Menu (default is px) 2. Scroll Down to the in 3. Select the in 4. While on this screen also go to the Default units menu at the top right 5. Scroll down to the in 6. Select the in MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 9

10 Setting Your Page Size and Units 1. Change the Width to 24 in 2. Change the Height to 12 in 3. Close the Screen This is the set- up for the laser cuder if your material fills the en<re bed. If your material doesn t fill the en<re bed, you might what to shrink the page to the size of your material OR you can create a separate guide box in your document. If you are designing for a different machine use document senngs appropriate to that machine and material. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 10

11 Setting Your Page Size and Units Your final document should look like this. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 11

12 Setting up a Guide Box You might want to create a guide box if your material is smaller than bed of the machine you will be using. Then you can create your design inside the guide box in order to make sure your design will fit on your piece of material. To do this we first need to create a rectangle. Go to the tool bar on the lec of your screen and select the rectangle and square tool MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 12

13 Setting up a Guidebox Click and hold on the document and, while con<nuing to hold, drag downward to form a rectangle Release your click leaving the rectangle behind. Go up to the W and H (width and height) fields in the upper lec of the top tool bar and type in your desired width and height MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 13

14 Setting up a Guidebox Finally we need to align the guide box with the origin of the machine bed, where the tool will start cunng. For a Laser Cuder that is the upper lec corner. To align exactly to the corner (which is at {0,12} on the Inkscape coordinate plane) type 0 into the x and 12 minus the height of your guide box (4 inches in this case). This aligns your guide box to the top lec corner of the document. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 14

15 Zooming In and Out In order to zoom in and out in your document go to zoom tool in the tool panel on the lec side of the screen. This will bring up the zoom tool bar The + and magnifying glasses zoom in and out from the center of the document. Moving right the magnifying glasses do the following: 1:1 moves the zoom to 100% 1:2 moves the zoom to 50% 2:1 moves the zoom to 200% Zoom so anything you have selected fits in the screen Zoom so that your drawing fits in the screen Zoom to fit the whole document page in the screen Zoom to fit the whole document page width in the screen. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 15

16 Draw a Shape To draw a rectangle, first go to the tool bar on the lec of the screen and select create rectangle and squares. Next click, hold, and drag down to create a rectangle. Set the size of the rectangle or square by entering the width and height in the W and H fields at the top of the screen. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 16

17 Draw a Shape If you would like to create a rectangle with rounded corners you can change the Rx or Ry to round them will re- square the corners MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 17

18 Draw a Shape To create a star or a Polygon click on the create stars and polygons tool in the tool bar on the lec hand side of the screen. To create a polygon select the pentagon icon. To create a star click on a star icon Once you have selected which type of shape you would like to create. Click, hold, and drag down to create the shape. To size the star (or polygon) you will need to click off the shape and enter your desired sizes in the W and H fields MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 18

19 The op<ons when you create a star or polygon can help you create some interes<ng objects. The spoke ra<o field is only available for stars and sets the ra<o of the base radius (the inside corners) to the <p radius (the outside corners. This slide gives two examples of what the spoke ra<o can do at either extreme. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 19

20 The randomized field randomizes the placement of the corners. The rounded field rounds the the corners of the star. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 20

21 Draw a Shape To draw a circle, first go to the tool bar on the lec of the screen and select create circles ellipses and arcs. Next click, hold, and drag down to create a circle. Set the size of the circle or square by entering the width and height in the W and H fields at the top of the screen. If W = H then it will be a circle. If not it MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 21 will be an ellipse

22 Draw a Shape The op<ons when you create a circle can help you make arcs and par<al circles You can create a semi- circle or par<al circle by use the Start and End fields by entering the angle (in degrees) from the circles horizontal. Doing this will ac<vate the op<ons to the right of the fields. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 22

23 Draw a Shape To create an arc, click on the switch to arc icon. This will take the closed par<al circle you have made and make it an arc of the same size. If you want to return to the full circle again click on the Make the ellipse whole icon. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 23

24 Draw a Shape To create a spiral click on the Create Spirals tool in toolbar on the lec of the screen. Then click, hold, and drag to create the spiral. Once create you will have several ways to modify your spiral. First you can adjust the number of turns in it. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 24

25 Draw a Shape You can also change the divergence value to change the density of the spirals MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 25

26 Draw a Shape Use the Inner Radius field to change the radius of the first revolu<on. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 26

27 Vector vs Raster In a program like Paint or Adobe Photoshop a drawing is composed of pixels, small blocky dots. The laser will Interpret this informa<on as a Raster command, and engrave this image on the surface MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 27

28 Vector vs Raster In a program like Inkscape or Corel Draw, a drawing is composed of Pixels, small blocky dots. The laser will interpret this informa<on as a Vector command, and cut drawing into the material. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 28

29 Vector vs Raster In order to vector cut your object with the laser cuder you need to set the line (or stroke) width to inches or it will not cut. In Corel Draw this is called Hairline. In Inkscape it is ocen beder to draw in a larger stroke size and reduce it at the end. 1. Select your object by using the select tool which is the arrow on top of the lec side menu. 2. With your object s<ll selected go to the Object menu and select Fill and Stroke MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 29

30 Vector vs Raster Using the Stroke Style change the width to in. Check the Stroke Fill and Stroke Paint Menus as well to make sure there is no fill and the stroke color is black. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 30

31 Path Functions Design programs all have tools/func<ons that allow you to make novel shapes out of the simple shapes that you just learned to make. We will walk through these func<ons now. 1. Using the square tool make a 4 inch x 4 inch square 2. Using the circle tool make a 4 inch x 4 inch circle 3. Align the circle and square so that one side of the square spans the diameter of the circle MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 31

32 Path Functions 1. Select the square, then holding down the shic key select the circle (In different programs some<mes you use the ctrl key instead of the shic). 2. You will no<ce the following func<ons: Union Difference Intersec<on Exclusion Divisions 3. It is these func<ons that we are going to explore today. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 32

33 Path Functions Selec<ng the Union func<on with both of your shapes selected will result in the above figure, a combina<on of both shapes Selec<ng the Difference func<on with both of your shapes selected will result in the above figure. This subtracts the figure you drew second that is on top from the figure you drew first., which is on bodom MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 33

34 Path Functions Selec<ng the Division func<on with both of your shapes selected will result in the above figure. It removes any part of the figure on top outside the figure on bodom Selec<ng the Intersec<on func<on with both of your shapes selected will result in the above figure. It removes anything outside of the area where the two figures intersect. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 34

35 Path Functions Exclusion requires your figure to have a fill. Select you circle and square and go to the Stroke and Fill menu under the Object menu. Once there select the Fill menu and add a fill. The color is not important. Selec<ng the Exclusion func<on with both of your filled shapes selected will result in the above figure. It excludes the area where the two objects intersect. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 35

36 Inserting Text To insert text into Inkscape, select the text func<on that is near the bodom of the tool menu on the lec- hand side of the screen. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 36

37 Inserting Text Using the cursor click and pull to create a text box. Once you have released the text box a cursor will appear in the box, allowing you to type. Use the font, font size, and text format senngs in the top bar just as you would in a Word Document. The Stroke and Fill menu can then be used to change fill and stroke so you can set- up the text to raster or to vector cut. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 37

38 Inserting Text You can also make text follow a shape (or a path as it is called Inkscape). To this create a shape and then enter some text. Select both the text and the shape by clicking on them while holding shic. Then go to the Text menu and select Put on Path MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 38

39 Inserting Text If you don t like exactly where the text ended up on your shape you can move it by clicking off your new text decorated shape and selec<ng the text tool in the tool bar on the lec side of the screen. While in text tool mode select the text so that you have the cursor at the front of the text. While holding the Alt key down use the arrow keys to move the text in the direc<on you desire. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 39

40 Inserting Text The final product acer shicing text is shown here. If you want to have just your text appear without the guiding spiral, then delete the spiral and it will leave your spiraled text behind MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 40

41 Vectorizing a Picture To create a vector file out of a picture file or vectorize a picture, you must first import a picture file. 1. Go to the File menu and select Import. 2. This will open a window where you can select the picture file you want to import. 3. Acer you import your picture another window will appear asking about embedding or linking your picture. 4. Choose Embed and hit ok. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 41

42 Vectorizing a Picture Your picture file should now appear in your document. Select your picture and Go to the Path menu and select Trace Bitmap MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 42

43 Vectorizing a Picture The Trace Bitmap menu will appear. If you have chosen a black- and- white picture, chose Edge detec<on. If you have not, choose Color quan<za<on for color files and Brightness cutoff for grayscale files. Hit Ok and the trace will appear in preview window. Close the window and click and drag your picture. Your trace will pull out from on top of your picture. Then just cut your trace. Delete the original picture. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 43

44 Saving a File to Cut To save a file you cut: Go to the File menu and select Save As. A box will appear. Select pdf from the dropdown menu and save to the file you prefer. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 44

45 2D Design File Types 2D Pixel Graphics: Saving in these formats will change your file to a pixel file and destroys any vector data. You can however import these files to an Inkscape file. BMP Bitmap JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group PNG Portable Network Graphics GIF Graphics Interchange Format 2D Vector Drawings Saving in these formats will preserve your vector data and enable edi>ng in another vector- based drawing program or enable you to send it to a machine to be cut. SVG Scalable Vector Graphics DXF Drawing Exchange Format PDF Portable Document Format MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 45

46 Positive and Negative Spaces When designing an object to be cut out it is important to consider what parts you would like to keep (posi<ve spaces) and what parts you would like to remove (nega<ve spaces). This can change from machine to machine. The buderfly on the lec might be hard to cut on a vinyl cuder, but perfectly fine on the laser cuder. The Text below would be fine cut out of vinyl, but if you were to cut it with the laser, you would use the inner parts of the e, o, and d. Hello World MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 46

47 Cloning Some<mes when you are designing you want to be able to make mul<ples of an object in your design that are all exactly the same size. If at some point in your design process you find out you need to change their size or orienta<on, it would be nice to have an easy way to change all of them at once. The Cloning feature in Inkscape does this To demonstrate this feature we will be lining up cloned squares on a rectangle. You will get to prac<ce some of the skills you have just acquired. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 47

48 Cloning First create a 10 inch wide, 5 inch tall rectangle and locate it at X = 1 Y = 8 Then create a 1 inch x 1 inch square and locate it at X = 1 Y = 10. You should then have what I am showing here. Next select the square and go to the Edit menu. Select Clone and then Create Clone MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 48

49 Cloning This will create a clone right on top or the original (it will look like nothing has happened). Click on the square (if it is not already selected) and type in the X field 3 and in the Y field 10. you should see the cloned square emerge. Create 3 more clones and place them 1 inch apart at (5,10), (7,10), and (9,10) un<l you have a similar drawing to the one shown here. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 49

50 Cloning Now select the original square. If for some reason you have forgoden which the original was you can go to Edit, Clone, Select Original and it will take you back to your original object. Once you have selected the orginal begin to modify it. Here I choose to increase the height of the square and rotate it. No<ce that all of the cloned objects are changed too. If for some reason you want to unlink one of the cloned objects, select the object and go to Edit, Clone, Unlink Clone MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 50

51 Cloning If you wanted to create a lot of Clones, and if you wanted them to assume a certain you can select your object and use the Create Tiled Clones. Which is under the Edit, Clone menus. Selec<ng Create Tiled Clones will bring up a menu where you have many op<ons to choose from in how many <les you want and how you want them paderned MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 51

52 Cloning In this example we selected a boring 1 x 5 simple transla<on, but you should feel free to play with the different op<ons. The 1x5 simple transla<on gave us the image shown here. From here we would translate each square where we wanted it by providing appropriate X and Y loca<ons. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 52

53 Grouping If you wanted to move your newly created objects together you could select the all and move them as separate objects, but that can get messy, especially with more complicated systems. An easier way to move a several objects as one is to group them. To do this select all of the objects you want to group and go to the Object menu MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 53 and select Group.

54 Grouping This will turn the separate objects into one object that is easily translated or rotated. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 54

55 Alignment If you would like to align a random collec<on of objects you can use the Align feature. To do this, select all your objects by clicking while holding down shift. Then go the Object menu and select Align and Distribute MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 55

56 Alignment This will bring up the Align and Distribute menu. There are a large variety of op<ons in this menu. The best way to learn about them is to try them. Create several randomly placed shapes. Select the all and begin trying the different op<ons. Remember to undo each alignment or distribu<on acer you try to fully see the effects of each func<on. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 56

57 Nodes Nodes are a useful way of manipula<ng objects. This tutorial will only cove the basic node skills. For more on this topic consult the more advanced tutorials linked at the end of this document. First we will use Nodes to manipulate a free- hand drawing. Free- hand drawings done the Free Hand, Bezier, or Calligraphy tool are Always paths, meaning we can directly edit with the node tool. All the shapes, including the spiral are objects (not paths) and need a lidle modifica<on before we can edit their nodes MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 57

58 Nodes To edit a free hand drawing, like the one show here, go to the Edit Paths by Nodes tool on the lec hand menu. Then click anywhere on your free hand drawing. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 58

59 Nodes This will show you all the Nodes built into you drawing. If you would like to change the shape of your drawing slightly select a node (or nodes) and move it (or them). You will see your drawing deform accordingly. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 59

60 Nodes If you would like to manipulate an area, but there is no node to pull on, you can add a node by selec<ng the two nodes you would like to locate a new node between, the use the Add a node feature in the top menu. This node can then been used to further manipulate your drawing MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 60

61 Nodes If you want to remove a node you can do that by selec<ng that node or nodes and using the Delete selected nodes op<on in the top menu. The dele<on of a node un- anchors that sec<on of the drawing and provides further manipula<on. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 61

62 Nodes You can also join selected end nodes by selec<ng both nodes and using the Join selected nodes op<on in the top tool bar. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 62

63 Nodes If you would like to delete a por<on of your drawing you can select the nodes on either side of the segment (you can also add nodes to delete smaller segments) and use the Delete Segment op<on In the top tool bar MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 63

64 Nodes To manipulate a shape (or object) click on that object and use the Convert Object to Path op<on in the top tool bar (or Object to Path under the Path menu). This will then give you the nodes for this object. In this example I have drawn an ellipse and decided to join segments of it to the free- hand drawing. To get the segments I want I need to add nodes. I add one between two nodes.. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 64

65 Nodes And then I add another MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 65

66 Nodes I then delete the segment between the last added node and my top node. I repeat this process for the bodom of the ellipse MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 66

67 Nodes Finally I joined the ends of the ellipse to the ends of the free hand drawing using the Join Nodes tool. This gave me the odd looking path you see here. MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 67

68 More Practice For More PracIce Try these Tutorials: hjps://inkscape.org/en/learn/tutorials/ MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and TIES (Teaching Ins<tute for Excellence in STEM) 69