Pre-Built Primitives

#1

I have had the need to just cut a circle or square out quickly. So I have been slowly building a library of primitives. In Inkscape I draw a square, circle, oval, rectangle or polygon and just save that by itself properly labeled. My design and labeling is in mm.

image

So tonight I needed a 3/4 inch right triangle to prop something up. I just open the 50mm right triangle, zoomed in on the GFUI and resized it to .75" using the rulers. Then Lasers! It’s quick and easy primitives until we can start to draw inside the GFUI.

#2

Many of us have done the same. Two downsides…

  1. No ability to specify size numerically in the GFUI
  2. No way to scale x and y independently

Still definitely has its uses though!

#3

And in speaking to scaling x and y independently; I tried to flip a design by scaling it past 0. That doesn’t work either. Rotate is fine. But flip is more fun.

#4

I have used a rectangle and square a few times, but a ‘cut line’ gets a workout trimming useful pieces off a sheet that has cut outs on it.

#5

The having to eyball it thing in the interface is a pain. We need at least an pop-up when resizing an object that displays X.Y as most modern programs do…