Aloha! Today we had a fun SVG Meetup with the return of Oceana to #rdcHQ. She has decided she wants to sit in on both our WordPress and SVG Tracks this year which we think is totally cool. There is a lot to absorb in both tracks.

Save Early and Save Often

After a primer of what we are trying to achieve on the SVG project, Levi and Oceana began work on some of the more complex illustrations in the Easy Level that we are focusing on (as some of the very basic illustrations are for the purpose of demonstrating techniques in our tutorials which provide building blocks for the entire collection). We covered some workflow issues as in how to save, name and organize our files so we can work effectively as a group. We also very quickly learned that it is wise to activate the Inkscape Autosave function. Autosave is a relatively new feature introduced in 0.47 (the latest stable release is 0.48.1) which prevents the loss of work in the event of a software crash.

You can find it under File → Inkscape Preferences :

Essentially, Inkscape saves a copy of the file into another directory at predetermined intervals, leaving the original revision history intact (so the “Undo” works ). We are experiencing software crashes on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms with Inkscape 0.48.1. We are trying to determine if it is a memory issue as several memory leaks were also addressed in 0.47. According to our research, we have ample RAM to run the program. This particular issue has not hindered progress, and since we all agreed to use the same software to collaborate effectively and help each other learn we have decided to adopt the motto “Save Early and Save Often (and use AutoSave!)”

Christopher and I spent the last part of the session going over some basic drawing techniques for our next tutorial using the exercises on Worksheet 1 – Hello World. Here we cover duplicating shapes and moving them a specified increment so that the shapes align perfectly.

Duplicate and Move

The best way to draw a technical illustration with precision is to specify increments numerically as opposed to “drawing by eye.” The drawing below is rendered as a series of boxes that are duplicated upon itself using the Edit → Duplicate command and moved incrementally using the Object → Transform command as follows:

It is important to note that as a default Inkscape adds half the stroke width to the shape dimension and this must be taken into account when setting the increment in the Move → Vertical dialog box. This number is calculated by subtracting half the stroke weight from the overall height (H) of the shape as shown in the Inkscape menu bar below, at right.

Once this value has been determined, the Transform → Move command can be applied. We are researching if it is possible to set Inkscape’s preferences to have the stroke be contained within the shape so as not to affect the overall dimensions. As far as we can surmise it is not possible without clipping the stroke, and that would still require simple math on the part of the artist to double the stroke weight before clipping (not that requiring humans to do simple math is necessarily a bad thing ).

Once the objects are in position and correctly aligned, we apply the same technique of Stroke to Path and Union that we illustrated last week -

Caveats

It is important to note that at least two of our team members are die-hard Adobe Illustrator users, and we find the most basic exercises extraordinarily tedious . However, in the best interest of the project, we all decided to work in the same application because we want to prove that creating art of this quality is indeed possible using free tools.

We are all quite jazzed at the idea of our collaborative functional art project – building a vital clip-art library that serves an important purpose — improving building codes for California — and that one day our art may find itself in a presentation of an architect with a vision or an infographic of a city planner trying to make a critical argument. This art can also provide a foundation for other states to improve their own building codes, and we want to ensure that anyone can do this with free tools and not be forced to pay for a software program. We’re going to see if adding Google Sketchup to the mix makes things easier. We definitely think that it will help with the more advanced illustrations, although our team is proving that some degree of accuracy is indeed possible with Inkscape.

Over the next week we plan to research the memory problems in-depth, check out Google Sketchup, and scour the Inkscape documentation.