Inkscape

Joining Lines to create a box

Asked by Doug Shuck

Hi

    There appears to be only two ways to draw a straight line in InkScape. (1) Is to use the Box tool and simply make the height of the box so narrow that it looks like a single line. (2) Is to use the Bezier tool, which is a bit cumbersome just to draw a straight line. Is there any other method?

     There are times when I need to draw a parallelograms or decagons or hexagons, etc... , which I could do with the Bezier tool but the problem is that once drawn there is no apparent way to "join" the individual line segments so that then become a single object that can be "filled" with colors and patterns. Is there a solution to this?

      I have read the manual at http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Attributes-Stroke.html#Attributes-Stroke-Join and nothing there seems to apply to these issues.

Thanks!
Doug

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Best su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#1

1) The box tool creates a (closed) shape (a box aka rectangle), not a line (path). These are distinct geometric objects, and are not the same. Do not use the rectangle tool if you actually want to draw a line.

2) Easiest way to draw a straight line (i.e. with two nodes):
- use the pencil (freehand) tool (keyboard shortcut 'p'), click once for the first node, click a second time for the ending node.
  (do not click-drag - this will draw a freehand curve)
- use the pen (bézier) tool (keyboard shortcut 'b') for multi-segment lines (with sharp corner nodes): you can draw straight lines by clicking with the left mouse button once (Note: do not click-drag) to add new nodes, or you can switch to the 'straight line' drawing mode of the tool. Finish a path with a right-mouse-button click, or by pressing <Return> (aka <Enter>)

Tip: Pressing the modifier 'Ctrl' while drawing a path will restrict the angle at which the line (or next line segment) is drawn.

3) To close a path with the pen tool, hover the start node until it gets highlighted and click once.

Above steps and a lot more details are all described in the manual section about creating paths:
<http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Paths-Creating.html>

Tip: You can close open paths (later on) with the node tool too: select the path, switch to the node tool (F2), select the two end nodes, and click on the button on the node tool controls bar right above the canvas to join the two selected non-endpoint nodes with a new segment.
<http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Paths-Editing.html#Paths-Node-ToolControls>

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Doug Shuck (doug-shuck) said : 		#2

Thanks ~suv, that solved my question.