Hello

Being new to Inkscape I am still trying to learn its capabilities and controls as compared to others similar programs that i have used before. One thing that is bothering me now is "Line Drawing". With other programs I would select "line" to draw a line and then accept the default line style or I could select a different line style and line thickness from a pull down (or create a custom) and then I would place the mouse arrow where I wanted the line to begin. Since there is not a similar feature within Inkscape I have been struggling with the Pencil tool and the Bezier tool for lines.

The Pencil tool is okay but it does not give me any option to change line width. After I draw a line I can adjust the width manually as long as the line is in the same plane or perpendicular to it as it was initially created. However, once the line is rotated all bets are off. The Line then cannot be adjusted for width and if you try it simply scales the line, not the width. The pencil tool also has another issue when creating a straight line, the slightest variance in the user's stroke can cause a "twisted" line appearance if the endpoint is not exactly on the same plane as the staring point.

The real issue here is that once the User has created a drawing and rotated one or all lines then decides that he would like to increase or decrease the line width there absolutely no easy way to do this, unless I am missing something here. The only option then is to manually go to each rotated line segment and return it to its original plane then modify the width and return it to the position intended the drawing. This time consuming and painful.

Is there any better work around for this issue or is it being addressed in a future revision and if so when?

Thanks!
Doug

Hi, have you taken a look at the Fill and Stroke toolbar? You can find it at Object → Fill and Stroke, or with the shortcut Shift + Ctrl + F. In the third tab of this toolbar, Stroke style, you can change the line width .

I'm not quite sure what you mean with the twisted line appearance though. Perhaps you're referring to the fact that it's difficult to get a perfect straight line? By holding Ctrl before you indicate the endpoint of your line, you can control the angle.

Hope that fixes most of your problems!

[Edit]
By the way, Brynn posted a very nice tutorial on drawing lines on the forum: click here.

Moreover, when you really want to change the line width by scaling your line, there is an important button in Inkscape. Tavmjong describes it very well on his webpage: click here. Look for the four small pictures just above the section "Transforms with the Mouse". In Inkscape, these buttons are usually located somewhere on the top right.

When you say "line width" it sounds like you might mean the length of the line, or path. Technically, in Inkscape, a line is a stroked path The stroke width (I think what you're calling "thickness") can be adjusted at any time, no matter where its path lies, straight, curved, kinked, open, closed, etc. (Object menu > Fill and Stroke) But the length of the path is different. While you can also increase or decrease the length at any time, there's no way to change it by any specific amount of units, unless you make it horizontal or vertical, and probably straight.

There are a few different ways to change the length of a path. You can use the Pen/Bezier or Pencil/Freehand tool to continue drawing. Select the path, and engage one of those tools, and you'll see how to do it. If it's not clear to you what to do, then please look up those tools in the manual. Or you could engage the Node tool, and drag the end node, to make the path longer or shorter. Or you can make a path shorter by deleting the endnode.

There is an extension which can measure the length of a line. However, aside from measuring length or area, its main purpose is to print the measurement. So it's not really a very efficient tool, if you don't need the measurement printed. I have used it to get a measurement, then just Undo. And that's the best we have at the moment. I know that a proper measurement tool has been much requested. It seems like I've heard that one is on the way, but I can't remember for sure.

Hopefully mine and Ailurus' comments will answer your questions. But if we've missed something, just post a reply, and we, or someone will try again