Knife, Merge and Extrude

With a vector’s points open, the Knife cuts it, the Paint bucket fills each area its own colour, and Merge, Join and Extrude change its points. An area’s colour can follow a colour style, like any fill.

Before you start

These tools work on a vector’s points. Select a vector and press Enter, or double-click it. For a rectangle, an ellipse or another shape, choose Object → Flatten (Ctrl+E) first: it becomes a vector and its points open. The bottom bar then shows Move, Add, Bend, Knife, Paint and Delete, and the buttons that follow them.

Cut with the Knife

Pick Knife in the bottom bar, then drag across the shape. Or click once where the cut starts and once where it ends. The cut’s ends snap to the shape’s points.

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• Both pieces keep the fill they had, so at first the cut doesn’t show. Paint one with the bucket to see it.
• In a plain shape, the cut makes two separate pieces inside the one layer. In a shape that has areas, it adds the cut as segments, so each area it crosses splits in two and the shape stays one piece. The status line says how many areas split.
• The cut has to cross the shape. If it misses, nothing changes and the status line says why.

Paint areas with the bucket

Pick Paint in the bottom bar. A colour well appears next to it: click it to choose the bucket’s colour.

Hover an area: stripes in the bucket’s colour show over what is there now, and the status line says what a click will do.

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• Click an area to give it the bucket’s colour.
• Click an area already in the bucket’s colour to give it back the shape’s fill.
• Alt-click a filled area to remove its fill, which makes a hole; a checkerboard shows first. Alt-click an empty area to fill it with the shape’s colour.
• Where lines cross without a point, the first click adds the points so the area can be painted, and says how many.

Each click is one step: Paint Area, Use Shape Fill, Remove Area Fill or Fill Area.

Select an area, and Area fill

With Move, click inside an area to select it: its points and segments are selected, with a light tint. Drag to move it, and Shift-click to add another area.

With areas selected, the Inspector’s Fill section becomes Area fill, with “1 of 2 areas” (or however many) beside it:

• the area’s own colour, which you change like any fill;
• Use the shape’s fill, to drop the area’s own colour;
• for an area with no fill, Fill with the shape’s colour;
• Mixed, when the selected areas differ: a colour you pick then applies to all of them.

With no area selected, the Fill section counts the areas: Own colour “1 of 2 areas”, and No fill, each with a button that selects those areas.

Link an area to a colour style

An area’s colour can follow a colour style, so editing the style repaints it, as it repaints a layer’s fill.

1. Select the area, with Move.
2. In Area fill, click the styles button at the right of its header, and pick a style.

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• The row then shows the style’s name. Its menu has Detach to keep the colour and drop the link.
• Giving a linked area another colour, by hand or with the bucket, detaches it in the same step, and the status line says so. Ctrl+Z brings the link back.
• When areas split, each piece keeps the link. When they merge, the larger area’s colour and link win.
• To make a style from an area’s colour, choose the styles button → Create style from this fill: the style takes the area’s colour and the area follows it, in one step. The + on the colour picker’s Styles tab does the same.

Merge, Join, Bridge and Dissolve

These act on the points you have selected, and hand the tool straight back. They are the icon buttons after Delete in the bottom bar.

• Merge (M): collapse the selected points into one, at their middle.
• Join (J): connect two selected points with a segment.
• Bridge: connect selected points across two separate parts of the shape. The area it closes off takes the shape’s fill.
• Close path: weld loose ends that sit on top of each other, so a fill has something to fill.
• Dissolve: in a shape with areas, remove the selected segments that have the same fill on both sides, so those areas become one. A segment between two different fills stays; delete it to merge them. In a plain shape, Dissolve merges overlapping parts into one outline.

When a Join, Bridge or Merge makes three segments meet at a point, a plain shape switches to areas in the same step, and every area keeps its fill.

Extrude

Select one or more points and press E. A new point grows from each one and follows the pointer, already joined to it. Click, or press Enter, to place it; Esc takes it back.

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• From the end of a path, Extrude carries the path on.
• From a point in the middle of a path, it grows a branch. Within a few pixels of the line straight out of the corner, it snaps to it: the guide shows in red and the readout adds “on the guide”.
• As with G, you can type a distance, or press X or Y to lock it to one axis.

Delete points and segments

Delete takes away what you click, and says what happened to the areas. Or select points and press Delete.

• A point with two segments: it goes, and the path heals across it.
• A segment between two areas: the areas merge. The larger one’s colour wins, and if they differed, the status line names the colour it kept.
• A segment on the outside: the shape opens there, and the area it enclosed loses its fill. The status line says so; Ctrl+Z closes it again.
• A point where several segments meet: its segments go with it, and the areas round it merge or open.