Pen and Cloud Tool, Feedback wanted.

[Alfred Scott]

The WildTools Pen tool has a "Show all handles" option at the top of the dialog. I did this years ago, thinking that it is important to offer all types of options, and Illustrator did it, so I figured I should, too.

I'm starting to rethink this, and I'm thinking of eliminating the option. Does anyone use the "Show all handles" option with the Pen tool?

Reason I ask is because I'm in the process of reworking the Pen tool so that the basic drawing action can be used over and over in different tools with a minimum of effort. At the request of Michael Spencer, I'm doing this now which provides the ability to do very large clouds with a minimum of clicks.

I'm planning to take the polygon drawing and reshaping actions of WildTools and rework them so they can be used in different tools. For example, in the basic polygon drawing action, you have handles at the vertices, so you can do some reshaping on the fly, as you draw. When I get this done, I can use it for all sorts of things, like two of the drawing actions with the Cloud tool, or a chained operation with the Running Dimension tool.

I mention all this because I would like everyone to be thinking of ways this can be used. As a simple example, we could have polygon, pen and freehand drawing methods with the Linear Patterning tool.

Alfred

[jc4patents]

Alfred ---- I don't have an intelligent response to your question but I do have a dumb question. I know that the wild tools palette, for convenience, provides some of the same tools of the basic palette. The pen tool would seem to be a different tool but I don't see how it differs
from the bezier curve tool. What am I missing ?

[Matt]

Alfred isn't going to answer this, but it is covered in the manual.

[pbacot]

[As a simple example, we could have polygon, pen and freehand drawing methods with the Linear Patterning tool. ]

If I understand the idea. This sounds great to me. In general I would like other ways of using the patterning tool. Now I must have a line to work off of, not groups etc. Often I have to remove the line afterwards (this could be an option "delete base object") Or I wish to work off line from the last last (grouped) pattern set, but they won't work. ( I use patterning to layer linear symbols like plywood an gyp. bd. in details.)

Last new thing I used patterning for is hatching inside walls for special designations that may apply to only one wall. Click the wall line and (boom) the whole length is hatched. Which reminds me there isn't a sound for the pattern tool is there?-- sorry, I forget, my sound doesn't work for WT lately.[/quote]

[Andy Caldwell]

I don't think I would miss that option, especially if it improves other tools.

Andy

[ms]

Alfred- we've talked about this at length privately but I think it would benefit from a public discussion.

My idea is to automate Area Patterning. What I want is to use the b-spline [which I prefer, but also Polygon, or bezier], and when it closes, the enclosed area is filled with a pre-selected symbol or pickle object; I want to pick the object on the fly; and I want the pattern spacing to be based on the size of the object. This last bit is the sweetest part of the tool.

I want this to fill up planting beds with circles. As it stands now, the AP tool works quite nicely for this task, but it would be much easier to automate as described above. Sometimes I want 18" circles, sometimes 36", etc.

As I understand it, the new programming will allow you to do this. Comments from others are appreciated. But truly I have a hard time understanding the concept of classes.

ms