Greetings from #rdcHQ! This week in the SVG Track, we completed another set of illustrations under Simple Schematics. This new set introduced an essential technique as we move into the advanced levels known as interpolate.

Interpolate

For anyone familiar with Adobe Illustrator, this technique is similar to using the Blend tool. It’s a little more difficult to find buried in Inkscape’s Extensions menu.

(Extensions → Generate From Path → Interpolate)

This command makes it very easy to create a set of evenly spaced lines by drawing and manually spacing the first and last line in a series and generating the steps in-between programmatically. The number of lines between the first and last segment is the value that should be used for the interpolation steps.

The charts, grids and patterns that are in the advanced levels of our SVG Track will benefit greatly from this technique. We are in the process of building these patterns for our graphic library so they will be available for use on similar illustrations.

Creating Tiled Clones

We will also make good use of Tiled Clones (Edit → Clone → Create Tiled Clones) to create cross-hatching effects and other pattern fills that are common to our collection. This technique renders custom patterns quickly based on an object or group of objects. When used in conjunction with a Wacom tablet, this technique can often give a hand-drawn quality to elements of a technical illustration.

The technique above shows a group of lines being repeated in a reflective manner. Below is the same set of lines creating a very different effect by being tiled in a linear fashion.

Lots more coming up … Stay tuned!