Hi all, I'm still trying to get my footings in this program. I created a logo for someone awhile back in Autocad, colored it in photoshop, and now I'm trying to recreate it in Inkscape so they can use it for t-shirts, signs, etc.

Here is my issue. I have saved the CAD file as a pdf, and imported it into inkscape. I have combined paths and then joined endpoints, creating closed shapes. Now I can't seem to control where the fill goes.

This portion of the logo is the letter "A" morphed to look like a wave. It is made up of 4 parts. The basic A shape (without void), the "void" of the hole, 2 highlight portions that fit in the top and the bottom of the void, and the underside of the wave. You can see the A and the underside of the A unfilled in image 1, and then filled in image 2. Neither is filling properly. Is there a way to fix this?

Any help would be most appreciated!

Hi tigerbike,

I am afraid that the answer is the same as before: you have open paths.

1. Select all paths that make up the same object. Combine them (Ctrl + K)
2. Select the nodes that are endpoints (for example: the top nodes on the inner and outer curve that make up the A, and any corner node) and join them. Use the Node Tool for this.

See below quick example: I recreated a similar letter A, and broke the path at the indicated nodes. That creates your funky fill. After closing the path it fills correctly.


Remember that endnodes are indicated with a diamond marker (unfortunately corner nodes are indicated with the same symbol). Then you should be able to fill them correctly.

Hope this helps,
Syllie

Thanks again. Wow, those of you who know what you are doing sure make it look easy. I have more respect than ever for the digital artist. I thought I had been very careful to join all the nodes. I would select to paths, connect them, then select the node where the two overlap and select join. I'm not sure where I went wrong. I have tried to redraw it in inkscape, but I'm just not that handy with the pen tool. I'm more of a traditionally trained artist (graphite, watercolor,etc) so working with the pen and trying to figure out how the line will curve after I draw still seems so counter intuitive to me. I'm doing some tutorials to try to get the hang of things, so I guess I'll just keep plugging along. I appreciate all of the good advice!

A quick hint for any one else who has a similar problem - When you select your objects to fill, read the info line at the bottom of the window. If you think you selected one object and the info says you selected three, then you know you have broken paths....

Syllie, druban - thanks again. I finally got it sorted out. I had been clicking the endnodes once, and thus not selecting both of them. I started selecting them rubberband style and that did the trick! Syllie, you were right, that chainring was a lot of work, but now it's all done and I've completed my first company logo project in Inkscape! So excited! Quick followup question. When printers attempt to open the file (they are requiring vector art), will those who have AI or Corel Draw have any issues reading the .svg file?

I never used AI, but I have used CorelDraw up to version 11. Most SVG drawings open correctly. I was also able to open the svgs sucessfully in other programs, and they pass the svgvalidator check on the w3c website. It is wise to save the file as plain SVG (opposed to Inkscape SVG). Disadvantage is that metadata (if any) will be lost.

Other ways to share vectors for printing purposes:
- save the file as eps. Then it can also be read (after rasterizing) in programs as Photoshop. Note that Inkscape uses an internal DPI of 90. This means that designs drawn at 10cm x10cm in Inkscape, result in 10cmx10cm if you import them in a program like Photoshop with a setting of 90dpi (bit crude explanation).
- save as PDF.
Note that there are some issues with transparencies (tho there are workarounds by setting the fill to a solid colour corrected for the transparancy), and I ran into troubles where I used patterns.

One other forum post was asking about pre-flight of exported documents (a program like Scribus can be used for that) but there is not much help on this topic available yet (contemplating a tutorial but I am not subject matter experienced (yet) myself). This should run a pre-press check on documents and ensure that they are print ready.

Hope this provides further insight.

Cheers,
Syllie

You guys are great, thanks. I'm somewhat familiar with working with printers so I think I understand what you are saying. Am I correct then in saying that if I do a drawing in inkscape on an 8.5 x 11ish art board, and I know if may also be used for something much larger, when I save to EPS I should increase the dpi? So if 90 is the default (not sure I understand the why on that, I've always assumed screen resolution was 72dpi) and I want to increase the size in the print version 4X, and also print at 180 dpi (too low in reality, but just a working number) I would set the dpi setting in the eps dialog to 720? (90dpi X 2 = 180dpi x 4 = 720dpi) Is this the right logic?

The 90 dpi comes from a specification and is internally used as based value
Inkscape assumes a 1-to-1 relation at 90dpi (one SVG user unit translates to one bitmap pixel).

For some unknown reason most people assume that webgraphics have to come as 72dpi. This is nonsense, as dpi means nothing on a screen, just the number of pixels are relevant 100x100px will display on a certain size display with a certain set resolution as a real world dimension of n by m cm (or inch or whatever measure of lenght).

Resolution is however important when we want to print our designs on paper. For rasterized images it tells something about how the image was sampled. But for vectors that again means nothing as no sampling is involved (everything is scalable).

So when you make images for web, and you want your image to be 100x100px -> just draw it as 100x100px, export it with the default setting of 90dpi and you get exactly the size you want (a picture of 100x100 pixels - that the dpi is 90 is irrelevant - if you do not believe me: use a program like the freely available Irfanview and set the dpi to 0 or to 1000 it will still display as 100x100px). So the 72dpi that most webdesigners sorta fix on is irrelevant but it is hard to break habits.

For print however there are different requirements. If I make decorated paper (such as used for photobooks / scrapbooks) it needs to be printable at 12"x12" at 300dpi to have proper quality. I draw my design in Inkscape, do not care about the dimensions to start with (tho I make it a rectangle, and if I would do it properly I would even set up the document to that size- but I am a bit lazy). Then after I complete my work - I do a rubberband selection, lock the ratio in the tool control bar (the little lock between H and W), change the dimension to Inch and set the width to 12 ( height follows automatically). Then when I export my picture as bitmap (png) I tell it to use a dpi of 300. It will automatically recalculate the required number of pixels and set it to 3600x3600 (exactly what I need). So even tho it works internally on 90, you can prepare your export at ANY dpi you want.

If you save a design to EPS, and you try to open it with a image editor like GIMP or Photoshop, it will ask you for the dpi to import the file. As Inkscape uses the internal 90dpi standard, you should say 90 here to get the design over in the same amount of pixels (or multiply/divide with exact numbers to get 50%, 200% and so on), if you change the setting to someting like 72 then the size of the graphic will change in number of pixels and some people are recalculating - doing things like drawing a bit bigger design in Inkscape (125%) so they can import it at 72dpi which they find so important but in real life on the screen means nothing (pixels, only pixels are important).

Now, this is already a long post, but in the same spirit I might as well address the opposite effect too when you import raster images into Inkscape (from the FAQ):
Why do images 'grow' when imported into Inkscape?

I hope this clarifies a few things - and just a note - if you deliver true vectors to a printer they can produce it at any size you require without loss of quality. In that case just make sure your document is set up properly.

Cheers,
Syllie

And a small addition.. not directly related to your current question, but relevant for the issues you had before:

Apparently there is a script that can help combining subpaths from imported CAD and other type of drawings, also the next version of Inkscape has an improved node tool that support this feature. I use the dev builds on Linux but have not tried it yet. See this post for more details please: http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4272

Syllie