Goblinf's Blog: Canvas - Draw your own shapes - Path Tool for straight lines and geometric shapes

Path Tool for drawing straight lines and geometric shapes

I started writing this post thinking the Path Tool would be quite limited, then by accident (mostly by failing to repeat the same actions and trying to do the same thing differently by mistake) found out that it isn't at all! So this post is going to have far more in it than I imagined, and it's sparking off all sorts of new ideas in my head!

NODES AND CLICKS - what's the difference?

It is important to understand that this is NOT a drawing tool as such, it's not like a pencil, where you move the tip over your paper and it draws the line the pencil draws. That is what the Freehand Tool does.

Instead, you operate the Path Tool (at it's most basic) by clicking the mat every time you want a change in direction for your line to create your shape. Every click you make, shows as a blue point on the mat and then as you move to the next position, there's a thin blue line that follows your cursor around. You continue making single clicks to make new points, until you want to complete your shape fully and then you doubleclick on the first point you originally made.

I was rubbish at maths at school, but the closest thing in my experience to this, is plotting points on a piece of graph paper, which you then draw lines between to show what the graph is doing. With the Path Tool, you plot the points, and Canvas automatically draws the lines between the points for you.

In essence a single click OPENS and a double click CLOSES. This, as you'll see as we go through the examples is NOT always the same thing as the start and finish of a shape. Which is why when I've tried Node Editing, the open/close tool has always confused me. Now I've been fiddling on with straight lines and the Path Tool, I can now see there's a difference! I'm still working out how those differences can be exploited to make my own designs though.

What are Nodes?

Every time you single click on the mat you make a new point. These are called NODES. From now on I am going to call Points (where we create a mark on the mat to show a change of direction) a NODE.

Nodes are created by clicks - single or double

So the distinction between single and double clicks is this:

single click = creates a new Node on the mat that indicates a change of direction.
double click = makes a different shape depending on how you use it. EITHER
-to make a CLOSED SHAPE - double click on the first original Node you made OR
-to make an OPEN SHAPE - double click on your final new Node.

Or to put it another way:

a single click always creates, and a double point always ends.
a closed shape is created by a double click on the original first node
an open shape is created by a double click that's NOT the original first node.

What does that mean in practical terms in Canvas?
Quite! it's all very well identifying differences, but what do they mean, how can I use that knowledge to create what I want in a controlled way? So to make:

a STRAIGHT line - you start with the Path Tool, click once your starting point, double click your end point. You have 2 nodes.
a CLOSED SHAPE - for example a square, you start with your Path Tool, click once for your starting point, then another two times for your next two corners, then doubleclick the original starting point to close the shape. With a square you have 4 nodes. With a triangle you have 3 nodes.
an OPEN SHAPE - for example a corner (ie two lines at 90 degrees to each other), you start with your Path Tool, click once your starting point, click once your turning point then double click your end point. With this open ended shape you have 3 nodes.

Let's try those basic moves out!

STARTING POINT

Ok. Starting point as usual, log into Canvas and click New Project so you have a clean empty Mat area.

IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU START WITH A NEW MAT (because if you have a mat you've been working on with colours set up, the Path Tool works differently with a colour you've already been working with and you shall be confused that yours is different to mine when you do the same things!)

Click the Path Tool icon just below the Project Tab on the Tool Bar

TRIANGLE (CLOSED SHAPE)

Having clicked the Path Tool, click once on the Mat, a blue circle (Node) will show up where you clicked. Then LET GO of the mouse button immediately (keeping the mouse button down gives you Contact Points and therefore curved lines and that's in a later post). In this post it's just clicking we are doing NOT holding down the mouse button.

Single Click for your First Node.
Now without clicking again, just move your cursor away from the blue circle point. A thin blue line follows your cursor from that blue point wherever you go in the Mat area.

You can't see my cursor but it's at the other end of the blue line to the Original Node.
Now decide where you want the end point of your line to be, and click once, immediately letting go of the mouse button. This is your second Node and creates the first side of the triangle.

Two Nodes gives you one complete side and the beginning of the second side of the triangle
Now decide where you want your third point in your triangle to be, and click once, again immediately letting go of the mouse button. This is your third node and creates the second side of your triangle.
...

Single Click for your third Node
Now to finish your closed shape, of a triangle you take your cursor over to the Original FIRST NODE and double click on it. When you have your cursor in the right place, a little blue box forms around the outside of the original node.

Double Click the Original First Node to close the shape
Then, once you can see the little blue square, double click on that node and ta da!!! You have a closed shape! Hurrah you! You can tell it's finished and you've finished all actions because it then turns into an actual pattern shape with the dots for resizing etc that you are familiar with from the preinstalled basic shapes etc you get from the left hand margin. Also, the Path Tool is no longer highlighted, it's gone back to the Select Tool (arrow) to the left of the Path Tool. Keep an eye on which icon is highlighted pink and you won't get lost about which Tool you are using right now.
Now select that triangle and move it over to the side away from the mat. Don't delete it, I want to use it together with the straight lines to explain what would happen if you cut a random selection of lines later in this post.

In practical terms, this closed triangle, if sent to the machine and cut, makes a triangular hole. The more nodes and different directions the lines go in, the more complex the shape. For example, a hexagon that has 6 sides, is made the same way and has 6 nodes. The shapes don't have to be even sided, they can be whatever shape you like.

The upshot is that a closed shape ALWAYS gives you a complete hole and a full cut.

You either cut the hole and what drops out is the shape you want to use (for example squares to mat and layer).

Or, a variety of pattern shapes can be arranged without touching each other, and what's left between the cut out holes, is a lacy design. In essence it's closed shapes that are used to make papercuts, the design is actually the paper that's left surrounding the holes.

You can use both positive and negative space to make a design! Positive space is a die cut shape where you use the shape that's cut. Negative space is where you use the paper surrounding the holes for your design for example to make a stencil or a papercut.

I know you know this, but have you really ever thought about shapes in those terms? Because it really really helps to do so when you are designing your own pattern shapes!

STRAIGHT LINES - DIAGONAL, HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL (SINGLE SIDED OPEN SHAPE)

One difficulty with straight lines is that they are just that, a two dimensional line which isn't so easy to select if it's on the horizontal or vertical axis. So in this section it's about creating diagonal, horizontal and vertical lines, and also, how to easily select them to move them around or duplicate them once you've made them.

Diagonal Line You choose a starting point like you did with the triangle above with a single click.

Starting diagonal line

Then you move the cursor until the thin blue line is on the diagonal

Move cursor to make the thin blue line diagonal

Then you double click to finish the line. Obviously a line is an OPEN SHAPE (because a closed single line is a circle and for that you need a curved not a straight line). So to finish a line you double click at the other end, unlike a triangle where you double click on your starting point as above.

I'm not sure that makes sense to you, or even to me, but it's my best shot at explaining!

Double clicked Straight Line is an open shape

As you can see, the box you see when you select a pattern shape covers the full height AND width of the pattern shape. So with a diagonal line, that box is therefore quite a size and easy to select to manipulate with further functions or move around.

Vertical and Horizontal LinesNow do the same actions, but this time make a Vertical Line. It stands upright. Single click to start, double click to finish. It can be useful to magnify the mat and use one of the grid marks to follow to keep the line straight!

Then do the same actions, but this time make a Horizontal Line. It is lying down on the floor. As before, single click to start and double click to finish.

After you have double clicked, and the final horizontal line shape is shown as selected, you can see how damn small that resizing/moving box is!

You have a diagonal, vertical and horizontal line

There's a couple of ways to make it easier to select such small objects, and is particularly annoying to pick up small objects when Node Editing (later post).

Firstly if you magnify the screen, it's far easier to pick up the line. Your cursor turns into a cross with arrows at each end and you can click to select it.

Secondly, if you hold your left mouse button down and sweep it across the line, a dynamic blue box appears, and it selects any pattern shape that partially falls within the dynamic blue box. This super useful for selecting more than one pattern shape quickly, but also for tiny shapes like single lines.

Ok so that's how you make lines. What would you use them for?

So far I've used them to cut paperchains for christmas. I roughly equated them to the width of an A4 piece of paper, set about an inch apart to make about 12 pieces per sheet of A4. The cuts didn't quite meet the edges (sheer laziness on my part) so I just snipped them apart.

You can't use Process Functions (weld, remove, divide, subtract) on lines that aren't attached to anything else, just floating in space. Though you can Duplicate them and manually move them to where you want them. So to keep them in relation to each other, you group them. Remember what you group in Canvas can't be ungrouped in the machine. So think ahead!

I'm rather pleased with the result!

I can see that it would be useful to make say paper strips for quilling if set closer together, and also slots for tabs for pop-ups or 3D items within more complex shapes as stand alone lines. You can also use a stand alone line to fill in a gap in a scanned or traced or imported image, I'll do a post on the quick and dirty way to do that in due course.

It's worth saying that once made, you can rotate and resize the line using the same actions as any other shape, either using the resizing box, or the Properties (right click, choose properties).

Also I found, when making the cut file for the paper chains that what I actually need wasn't a full box with lines inside, it was literally just a series of straight cut lines, the actual edges of the A4 sheet of paper are precut! so, you don't need an outside box. You may want one, but you don't have to have one!

What sort of cut marks do these shapes make, if they are laid over each other in a loose mass of lines?

Now before we move onto the right angled corner cut shape (a multiple line open shape), let's just consider what happens if you actually cut a set of geometric shapes and straight lines? in practical terms.

Ok you have your triangle and your lines on the mat. Triangle is at one side, bring it back on the mat so it intersects with the diagonal vertical and horizontal lines.

I did mine like this and temporarily labelled them with coloured numbers to help illustrate what I'm saying:

The Red point 1 - the big triangle will be cut out as it's original shape, but with a slit in it (and a corner lopped off at green point 2).

But back to the triangle with a slit in it- Knowing that it's possible to make a shape and a slit in that altered shape is quite useful. You couldn't weld it, but you could group it.

I am currently trying to organise my house, so with that, I can make a basic shape that's a rectangle, and add slits at the top and bottom respectively for slat going vertically and horizontally and make drawer dividers that slot together - one way to keep the odd bits tidy!

A more complex shape could be a slice form that folds as part of a popup card.

Or, a 3D christmas tree shape from 2 pieces of paper with a slot at the top of one and the bottom of the other. Put them together, open it out and you have a stand up tree, close it up and it fits in an envelope.

The Green point 2 - This cuts out a tiny triangle and makes a slit across the surrounding card. So it alters the shape of the main triangle.

If you want to make a quick adjustment to the corner of a shape where you wanted to use the shape itself and not the surrounding paper, such as the big triangle you can just slap a straight line across it at the right angle. so long as you only want the shape, the line itself doesn't actually need to meet the sides of the triangle, they can overlap. It doesn't matter what happens to the surrounding paper, so it's a quick and dirty way of making quick changes to a shape, and is a useful way of cheating with Node Editing (a post on that later on).

The Blue point 3 - This also cuts out a small triangle, but it's OUTSIDE the big triangle. And also there's slits in the paper. This could be useful if I wanted to cut paper in a way that meant I was able to fold back the slits (can't imagine why right now, but I'll find something I'm sure...) and by slightly missing the centrepoint, there's a hole where the slits cross.

Finally at the bottom, where two lines cross (no number sorry!), it just makes a cross line that gives you a couple of flaps of different sizes. Cant imagine why I'd want that with various flaps but who knows. However it does lead nicely to the final Path Tool basic shape that I explored.

RIGHT ANGLE CORNER (MULTIPLE LINE OPEN SHAPE)

We're doing this one to show you how you can use single and double clicks to make a multidirectional line that doesn't make a hole, just a series of straight cuts that are joined to each other but open at each end. For example, a zigzag line.

ZigZag using single clicks for each Node, ending with a double click

Now this is likely to be more useful for drawing, as a decorative element, but I can also see how, for example if you wanted to make slits for holding the corner of something else, you'd use it for cutting.
So let's make one.

I started with everything else moved off to the side for this.

so with a clear working space on the mat, single click for a starting node, then make two more nodes in the same way you did with the triangle you did first, way up at the top of this post. But on the third node you double click NOT single click. This gives you a two sided slit if you cut it out. Basically it's a line bent in half by putting in an additional node so you can change direction.

Below on the left is a two sided slit - two single click nodes then a double click node to finish. On the right is a triangle - three single click nodes then a double click on the original first node to finish.

Two sided slit (multiple lines open shape) on the left and triangle on the right

I can see it would be fun to have a series of these two sided slits, and fold them backwards and forwards using two sided paper, it would make a fun slightly dimensional border for a card or scrapbooking for example! I think there's die cut dies that do cutting and you do folding and tucking to make a border, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of!

Why is this distinction between the closed triangle and the two sided slit important? well, because the next post is about how using a colour when creating shapes with Path Tool, using the same actions for single and double clicks as we have in this post, gives a slightly different result HERE (not done yet).