I'm not sure what I've done, but the method of creating rectangles has changed for me.

I used to click the rectangle tool, then click and drag to create a rectangle of the desired size. Now I have to just click once, and it creates a rectangle of a fixed size, which I can then change. How has this happened? How do I change it back to how it was?

And the rectangles that I'm creating are invisible. I.e as soon as I select another object, they disappear. I haven't been able to select them again, so they appear to be unselectable too.

I recently change the property of a rectangle so that its fill and stroke paints were "none". Is it applying this to all rectangles I create now? How do I stop that? And is there a way of selecting an invisible shape?

I recently change the property of a rectangle so that its fill and stroke paints were "none". Is it applying this to all rectangles I create now? How do I stop that? And is there a way of selecting an invisible shape?

Yes, it's taking the style of the last object created with that tool. You can select an invisible object in a couple of ways. One is to use the Tab key which selects the first drawn object, and cycles through all objects, one at a time, with each keystroke. Shift + Tab cycles backwards. Or if you happen to know the general vicinity, you could drag a huge selection box and hope to catch it.

I don't know why the devs have the default behavior of Inkscape for last used style. To me, it seems ridiculous. I can't tell you how many messages about this, that we get! Anyway, first draw a rectangle, and give it whatever style you want (stroke or no stroke, fill or no fill, color of either/both, including opacity, and stroke width). Then if you double-click on the tool's icon/button, it will open Inkscape Preferences to that tool's settings. There you'll see 2 options, choose This tool's own style, then click Take from selection. Now the rectangle tool will draw exactly like that, every time. This can be done for most of the other tools as well.

However, I don't know about clicking once, and a whole new rectangle appears. I've never heard of that But I do learn something new about Inkscape, almost every day! Maybe there is some way to do that? Or else, I don't know, you're not trying to use a Paste option are you (Paste in place, size, style)? You have to use 2 or 3 keys to do most of them, so I doubt if that's the case. But anyway, if you could give us any more info about that, maybe someone will know a trick that i don't know about

brynn wrote:

I recently change the property of a rectangle so that its fill and stroke paints were "none". Is it applying this to all rectangles I create now? How do I stop that? And is there a way of selecting an invisible shape?

Yes, it's taking the style of the last object created with that tool. You can select an invisible object in a couple of ways. One is to use the Tab key which selects the first drawn object, and cycles through all objects, one at a time, with each keystroke. Shift + Tab cycles backwards. Or if you happen to know the general vicinity, you could drag a huge selection box and hope to catch it.

I don't know why the devs have the default behavior of Inkscape for last used style. To me, it seems ridiculous. I can't tell you how many messages about this, that we get! Anyway, first draw a rectangle, and give it whatever style you want (stroke or no stroke, fill or no fill, color of either/both, including opacity, and stroke width). Then if you double-click on the tool's icon/button, it will open Inkscape Preferences to that tool's settings. There you'll see 2 options, choose This tool's own style, then click Take from selection. Now the rectangle tool will draw exactly like that, every time. This can be done for most of the other tools as well.

However, I don't know about clicking once, and a whole new rectangle appears. I've never heard of that But I do learn something new about Inkscape, almost every day! Maybe there is some way to do that? Or else, I don't know, you're not trying to use a Paste option are you (Paste in place, size, style)? You have to use 2 or 3 keys to do most of them, so I doubt if that's the case. But anyway, if you could give us any more info about that, maybe someone will know a trick that i don't know about

Thanks, I get it now. It's actually a handy default style, but only if you know about it first. I've also spotted how to change the stroke type of the current object, using the thing that appears down in the left end of the status bar.

If the devs don't want to change the default creation style, perhaps they could put it in a "Tips" message that comes up when you open the program, like they do in some other programs. It made the first day with this program very confusing, and I imagine it would put a few people off continuing with it. I also see a sticky FAQ posting at the top of this forum. You might want to consider putting an explanation of it in there if you're getting lots of questions about it.

I'm not sure what happened with the single click creation. It's stopped doing it now that I've close and reopened the drawing, so I can't experiment with it.