Inkscape

Freehand drawing tool automatically creates circles that are permanently attached to the finished shape

Asked by Ben

I'm trying to create outlines of continents using the freehand drawing (pencil) tool. When I try to draw North America, a bunch of circles appear almost immediately after closing the path by connecting the nodes. Oftentimes these circles are far larger than the shape I draw. These circles appear automatically and they seem to be permanently attached to the shape - I can't ungroup or delete them.

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

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Hachmann
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Best Hachmann (marenhachmann) said : 		#1

Hi Ben,

the reasons I can think of is that either there's a path effect or a strange kind of stroke style applied to the path you are drawing.

Path effect:

To find out, select the path and look into the status line at the bottom of the window.
Does it say something about a path effect? -> Remove the path effect by going to the menu: Path -> Remove path effect .

The freehand tool has a spiro path effect option. Set the mode at the top in the toolbar to 'Create Bézier path' instead of Spiro to no longer create spiro paths.

Stroke style:

This is probably not the reason, because there are no circle dashes readily available in Inkscape: Look into the Fill&Stroke dialog (Object -> Fill and Stroke), third tab, and select a different stroke dash pattern.

Kind Regards,
 Maren

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Ben (a7xfanben) said : 		#2

Looks like it was the Spiro path, thanks!

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Ben (a7xfanben) said : 		#3

Thanks Hachmann, that solved my question.