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Alfred Scott
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 633
Location: Richmond, VA
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 Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 7:32 am Post subject: Squiggle Objects |
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I'm thinking about creating Squiggle Objects in WildTools 8. This means that after you squiggle something (line, polygon, Bézier, etc.), it would continue to act like a normal PowerCADD object, with handles at the ends of line, ability to Reshape, etc.
It makes sense to me that PowerCADD snapping should only snap to the base object and should ignore all the up-and-down points of the squiggled line.
We should have the ability to convert the squiggled objects back to the original objects.
We may want to be able to adjust the degree of the squiggle with slider controls once the objects are placed in the drawing, like using Brightness and Contrast in Photoshop. If we had that in a floating window, then we could have the ability to choose 'no squiggle'.
This is a good time to be thinking of other types of line texturing that we might want in the future. Shadows? Blurs? Noise?
I'm also thinking of doing Linear Patterning Objects, and that would let you do almost anything you could imagine. Some years ago, Kevin Craft ask for the ability to have the elevation text in contour maps stick to the curve. This would make that possible.
Let me also mention that I will be on vacation for the next two weeks, so if you don't get a reaction from me, that's why.
Alfred |
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Matt
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 349
Location: Sterling, Virginia
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 7:46 am Post subject: |
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this all sounds terrific to me. How about you cross the gradiant tool with the squiggle tool, so we could have a pencil or colored pencil effect, a line that gets darker at the ends, for example...
are you implying you could also make it seem like the line was drawn with charcoal, or a juicy felt tip pen?
man, you should take more vacations. |
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JohnMorse
Joined: 14 Apr 2004
Posts: 291
Location: Birmingham, AL
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 8:36 am Post subject: |
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This sounds fantastic. It would also be nice if a squiggle or blur could be limited to one side of a line (or the inside/outside of a rectange or polygon). Ultimately the most useful tool would make it easy to achieve stippling or hatching along a line path (see Peter Bacot's Bullpen contribution on stippling)
If I understand what you are describing, Alfred, these line/object characteristics could be shown or hidden while the underlying geometry remains unchanged (and its simplicity preserved) similar to Photoshop's layer styles. I think it would be brilliant. |
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philloheed
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 139
Location: Somerville, MA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 9:48 am Post subject: |
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| Matt wrote: | this all sounds terrific to me. How about you cross the gradiant tool with the squiggle tool, so we could have a pencil or colored pencil effect, a line that gets darker at the ends, for example...
are you implying you could also make it seem like the line was drawn with charcoal, or a juicy felt tip pen?. |
This thread starts a train of thought that will be extremely productive, I think.
And by going on a vacation, there should be a chance for us to generate more suggestions.
I particularly like the idea of eliminating my (presently separate) "squiggle" layer, through the ability to fine-tune the squiggle effect, "revert" to the original objects at any time, and preserving the original snap points. All great stuff.
In the past you have mentioned creation of Mask objects in PowerCADD. These and transparency effects would combine nicely with the concept of squiggle objects to do some of the things Matt is suggesting.
 Will you take a PowerBook on the vacation?
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Phil Loheed |
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pbacot
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 844
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 10:05 am Post subject: |
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We should have the ability to convert the squiggled objects back to the original objects.
Alfred,
This and other things you've noted are great ideas. I have made many squiggle drawings for schematic presentations and they (IMHO) looked great for planning elevations etc. But then I was often pressured by higher-ups in the project to provide these for working drawings without redrawing. They still needed changes of course, tricky to work with--and didn't look as good at double scale.
You can, of course, draw all in straight lines and then squiggle, but this means you cannot use colored and squiggled groups for all the repetition of windows etc. As you move into squiggle you begin to develop THAT drawing, not the clean original. Then they want another (ACAD) user to take over the squiggled drawings. What a mess that is.
RECTANGLES should squiggle and keep their fill and not turn into POTATOES, and have overshoot lines too. Similar with polygons. It may require a composite (group) of objects.
I can't figure out how you would do any of this, Alfred. Seems like a huge task. Is there now some sort of smart object in PowerCADD to allow this. That would mean we could have wall objects that "know" they are walls etc.??
Peter
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Peter B |
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pbacot
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 844
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 10:12 am Post subject: fine points of emulating hand drawing. |
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| Matt wrote: | this all sounds terrific to me. How about you cross the gradiant tool with the squiggle tool, so we could have a pencil or colored pencil effect, a line that gets darker at the ends, for example...
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Boy we are getting down to finer points here! Squiggle drawings do look good with lighter color linework. I use a couple of shades of gray lines and use gradient fills in squiggled drawings. The effect comes out similar to what you are saying Matt, because the variation in values translate to more of a hand-drawn look.
Now why am I using a computer....?
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Peter B |
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Alfred Scott
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 633
Location: Richmond, VA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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This is software, folks. We can do anything we want to.
Let me explain that there is something called a 'clipping' path, region or rectangle. At the most basic level, this is what keeps lines from drawing outside the drawing window and from drawing overtop floating windows. On the more advanced level, each object can be drawn within one or more clipping paths.
If you look at the drawing behavior of the Grid Line tool, as you move the mouse and the lines are being drawn on the screen, they are clipped to the outline of the object. This is how gradients are handled, just a bunch of overlapping lines all clipped to the same clipping path. The same goes for dynamic hatching.
Phil Loheed has been after me to create the ability to draw to scale in a perspective drawing. What he proposes is a very complex thing, and I worry that anyone other than a Harvard-educated architect would understand it, but I had a similar thought pattern when we were working on PerspectiveTools, and we came up with the idea of 'explaining' what was happening by making a 'video game' that would react as you move the mouse.
To do what Phil has been suggesting, I've concluded that you need a similar 'video game' going on as you draw to 'explain' what is going on, and in this case, I concluded we should have lines that faded out as they went into the distance, to create the impression of depth.
You could draw a 'fading line' simply by drawing the line multiple times, but moving a clip path along it so only a piece of the line would show or draw at any one time, and changing the transparency or color each time you draw the line, you would create this impression.
So you could do this sort of thing to accomplish literally any effect on the screen, and Quartz is going to make much more possible, which is one reason Todd wants to get to Quartz-only drawing, and he's absolutely right about that.
So far, I've done all of the 'fancy effects' as screen drawing while you are drawing on the screen. Once the objects are placed in the PowerCADD drawing, PowerCADD does all of the drawing. In the future, we should have more advanced object, such as Mask Objects, which will require that WildTools be running to draw the WildTools-specific objects.
No, I don't have a portable, and when I go on vacation, I leave it all behind, but I usually do my best thinking when I'm away from my office.
One of my daughters might bring along her PowerBook, and I can tell you that one way to have your daughter think you're a too-cool dad is to hook up wireless Internet in your house.
Alfred |
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fred johnson
Joined: 04 May 2004
Posts: 57
Location: CT
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 7:58 am Post subject: |
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| Alfred, I think you are on the right path with this idea. |
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patrickm
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 314
Location: santa barbara, ca
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 12:52 pm Post subject: |
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| fred johnson wrote: | | Alfred, I think you are on the right path with this idea. |
I agree -- go get 'em, Alfred! |
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Jeff Bianco
Joined: 14 Apr 2004
Posts: 16
Location: Connecticut
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| Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:31 am Post subject: SQUIGGLES |
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Alfred's latest project will be absolutely great, but in the meantime, this is my method of getting double use out of our drawings.
My current mehod of using squiggle for presentation drawigns:
draw the buiding or whatever normally,
render it in color and gradients,
then selectively duplicate objects or groups and squiggle them till the drawing looks right.
Obviously I save the original un squiggled original, and you have a basis for continuing onto consttruction documents. |
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cjburns
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 8:36 am Post subject: Squiggle |
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I love the squiggle tool. I too use it for preliminary design presentations and would like it to be 'reverse-able' so that the presentation drawing can be revised to a higher level of detail. I like what you are talking about alfred because, if I understand you correctly, it means that if I have a polygon that has a particular line weight and fill, the squiggle tool will treat it as a filled squiggly rectangle with the fill matching the squiggled outline. This would avoid me having to paint bucket after squiggling.
My only request is that somehow the squiggle become randomized. At the moment, if you squiggle two lines of the same length beside each other you get a perfect match. Ah, details you say! |
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