Some more advanced topography elements.

[peterromao]

Hello gents,

I wonder if there is a kind soul that could help me out here.

I have been using Inkscape to do all my latest scoresaver booklets for a few golf courses and topography elements are a must.

I use mainly smooth paths with the Ruler LPE and some other times the Pattern along Path LPE.

So far so good. The problem is that I have very little control on the length of the ticks on the rulers and on the length of the arrow patterns on a path.

OK, I can define the length but it means it is going to be the same for every arrow or every ruler tick. I cannot for the sake of several workarounds make it variable length.

The most I could muster was using a clipping path on the ruler ticks. This limiits length of the major ruler ticks but will not influence the small ruler ticks.

Also the clipping path will only work on the arrows asa patteern on a path if I make the path previously out of its intended line so the the clipping path will cut the base of the arrows instead of the tips. Very cumbersome.

On top of all this there is another feature of topographical lines which is kind of mandatory, which is direction.

In my examples the direction of the arrows and the way the ruler ticks point is always perpendicular to the path. More often that not the base depicts the topo line (height relative to sea level - or any other reference level) and the direction of the ticks or arrows shows where the lines are falling (more often than not this is definitely not perpendicular to the topo line).

Just look at a couple of maps to see what I am talking about here.

What I would really love is to have some points or segments that I could use as magnets for the fall lines. Both on the Ruler LPE and on the Pattern along Path LPE.

The further I would put these points from the topo line the longer the arrows and ticks would get and orient themselves and vice versa.

Before answering any questions about other tentatives let me say I've tried, the Bend, the Perspective, the Interpolate Points, the Envelope, the Lattice Deformation (the closest to a magnet I could come up with but it will never maintain the straightness of the ticks or arrows) and the Bounding Box.

This was all to no avail. The only way I found to make these examples precise was to painstakingly draw avery single segment of the topographical elements. Very tiresome and worst than that, prone to error!

Ask me about examples and how I can sort them out and you will understand what I am trying to achieve.

I'll post some pictures (if that is viable on this forum) to underline the difficulties.

In the I might be cooking a typhoon in a cup of water, so to speak, but please, pretty please help out my tormented soul.

Thank you.
P

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

I'm not seeing any images.  But if you could post an example of what you already have, showing what you've described, and if you have any examples of what you want to achieve, that would help us to come up with ideas.

Are you saying like on a ruler, for example, you want the ticks to be variable lengths?  You might experiment with the Extensions menu > Generate from path > Interpolate.  Or maybe Path menu > Path Effects > Interpolate Sub Paths.

But I would need to see the images, to get a better idea what you're after. (I'm not a golfer.)

Are you saying that you want the length of the ticks to indicate elevation?

Edit
Rather than using clipping to make smaller ticks, you could use Path menu > Object to Path, on the LPE paths.  That makes them back into regular paths.  Then you could just drag the nodes, to change the length of the ticks.  Because I imagine, using a clipping path on tick marks, you might have quite a lot of clipping paths - which probably gets to be pretty confusing!

[peterromao]

Hello Brynn and thank you for your fast response.

I'm not seeing any images.  But if you could post an example of what you already have, showing what you've described, and if you have any examples of what you want to achieve, that would help us to come up with ideas.

You may find several examples of what I would like to achieve in the following website, one such example can be found on: http://www.strokesaver.co.uk/royal-troon-old-course.

Are you saying like on a ruler, for example, you want the ticks to be variable lengths?  You might experiment with the Extensions menu > Generate from path > Interpolate.  Or maybe Path menu > Path Effects > Interpolate Sub Paths.

The short answer is, yes. It is exactly as you say. Although I cannot fathom how to achieve that with the options you have suggested. Those can give me the possibility to do a sort of morph between height lines. Not the variable length of the ticks. Or at least I don't see how you can achieve that with the interpolate options.

Are you saying that you want the length of the ticks to indicate elevation?

Yes. Exactly.

Edit
Rather than using clipping to make smaller ticks, you could use Path menu > Object to Path, on the LPE paths.  That makes them back into regular paths.  Then you could just drag the nodes, to change the length of the ticks.  Because I imagine, using a clipping path on tick marks, you might have quite a lot of clipping paths - which probably gets to be pretty confusing!

I  did that in a couple of more complex situations but OMG, it is really really a heavy workload to do that. 

Hope this post directs you to a solution.
Cheers,
P

P.S. I attach an example of a file I prepared for your consideration.

[brynn]

Oh, this looks like an exciting and fun project.  Although certainly a lot of work!

Just so I understand, in the attached screenshot, the big red arrow that I added, that's pointing to, essentially, sort of a ridgeline on the green?  It slopes down on both sides?

In this tutorial, down through step #4, it shows how to use the Stitch SubPath LPE  (sorry, I called it Interpolate Subpaths before - sorry for the confusion).  That's what came to mind about tickmarks which have a variable length to indicate elevation.  However, now that I see your examples, I see that you use long-short-long-short tickmarks.  So you'd have to overlay 2 sets of subpaths - a set of longs and a set of shorts.  I'd have to play with that a bit, to find out if it would be a time saver or not, or if I could find shortcuts to make it less labor intense.  https://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=13

The Interpolate extension is similar, except there's no "live" component.  While it's not obvious how to make them variable, as opposed to just going from longer to shorter, I have found a way to do that.  But again, I'll have to experiment a bit.

When you said you were using a clippath, when I first read your message (without the image to look at) I thought you meant you were using a clipping path for each tickmark or maybe each few tickmarks.  But now I see you mean for a whole line you make a clippath.

The most I could muster was using a clipping path on the ruler ticks. This limiits length of the major ruler ticks but will not influence the small ruler ticks

For that, you could do the same thing I suggested for stitch subpaths.  Just make another clipping path for the short ticks.  You could even duplicate the clipping path of the "longs" and just move over the relevant portion of the path, to use for the "shorts".  Although you'd have to create the long ones and the short ones separately....or separate them after you make them.

One option that I haven't mentioned is Markers.  But at least so far, I can't think of a way to use them for variable length of the tickmarks or tick-lines, as they kind of turn out to be.

Let me play with your file for a little while.  At the moment, I think clipping may turn out to be the best option.  But often when I start to actually work on the canvas, I think of new things.

You mentioned arrows in your first message, but I don't see anything like that in the file you provided.  Well, not a line of variable size arrows anyway.

OH!!  Just thought of something.  There's an Inkscape extension for orienteering, which I think is something like "trail-blazing".  It creates maps - I guess something like hiking maps.  I think it uses all kinds of symbols and similar type of things.  Let me find a link to that.  I don't know if it works with the current version of Inkscape (probably not) but it probably works with some version (which might be better than nothing, if it turns out to be helpful). 

Ok, there are 2 links for it:  http://www.nopesport.com/news/1343-o-scape-free-orienteering-mapping-software and https://sourceforge.net/projects/o-scape/  It's said to work with version 0.48.  Unless one of those links has more current info.  I don't think there are many LPE's in 0.48, if any.  My old brain, I just can't remember.  But being an extension, I would guess it makes some of the work more or less automatic.  In any case, definitely worth taking a look.

And I'll still do some experimenting in your file, and see what I can come up with.  I've been curious about that orienteering extension for a long time, and I might just download it and 0.48 just to see what it can do.  Although I might be running out of time for today, but if I do, I'll be back tomorrow.

Edit
Oops!  Not Interpolate Subpaths.  I meant Stitch SubPaths!  Sorry about that!  Editing my comments above.