Dear Michael,

That's a great feature (ie. repeat), I wish I had noticed it myself. Works great.

As to bit mapped drawing, yes, I have been using MS Paint forever! You can do some amazing things using only Paint.

I recently used a scanned bmp of a large diamond pendant, and cut it up into many fragments. Then manipulating the fragments, I put some together to make a matching pair of earstuds, and the top of a ring.

NO RENDERING REQUIRED; the original scan had all the real metal colours, highlights etc. and of course real photographs of the diamonds and rubies. I was amazed at what such a simple program could do for me.

As to using some other pencil-like programs, thanks, but no thanks for the moment. I had a trial version of Painter that came with the tablet and did try it, but Michael, your programme is so simple, so intuitive... I am in love with it.

...and I am strictly monogamous. No other programme for me, but many thanks for your honest suggestion.

Warm regards,
Nariman.

Hi Michael. Many tablet stylii are double-ended. the other end having the function of an eraser in bitmap programs. So i think it could be possible to use the "eraser" end of a stylus to draw a closed curve that could auto-trim (or auto-split) any curves that fall within it's area. Of course, it would be necessary that the eraser curve is closed automatically, and will delete itself immeditaely after performing it's function. Maybe this could be set up to work within the sketch tool. So it's not required to exit the sketch tool?... For mouse users like myself (and those with a single-ended stylus), perhaps ALT+LMB would handle the eraser function... I see a few basic checkbox options for this eraser method:

**auto-split or to auto-trim?
**trim/split curves which are inside or outside of the trim curve?
**use apparent intersections (view-based), or act perpendicular to Cplane?
**act on pre-existing curves? If curves were pre-selected, it should be limited to those curves only

jonah

> Hi Michael. Many tablet stylii are double-ended. the other end having the
> function of an eraser in bitmap programs. So i think it could be possible to
> use the "eraser" end of a stylus to draw a closed curve that could auto-trim
> (or auto-split) any curves that fall within it's area.

Yes, this would certainly be an easy way to trigger it.


> Of course, it would be necessary that the eraser curve is closed automatically

This is the part that I would worry about - forcing a closed curve is not really how a typical eraser works. Like in Photoshop for instance if you want to erase something you can just scribble the eraser over inked areas, you don't have to form a closed region with it or anything, instead there is a zone around your cursor that is always being erased.

But doing a sort of structured-closed-curve erase like you are describing would be a lot easier to implement though.

However there could be some other nice possibilities for the "real eraser" style - for instance there could be some accuracy features if you start erasing a curve and track along it and start to snap at key points like intersections with other curves.

It will be a while before I'll be able to experiement with any of this though.

- Michael

> ...and I am strictly monogamous. No other programme for me, but
> many thanks for your honest suggestion.

I appreciate the sentiment, I really do! :) But at the same time I'd hate for you to limit yourself unnecessarily!

Anyway, I can understand that it can be hard to find time to mess around with other things. But when you do get in the mood to experiment at some point, you should give ArtRage a try, it is quite a lot easier than the Painter program that you tried before, it has a very clean and simple approach that I think you would appreciate.

- Michael

no rush of course... It doesn't really add anything that can't be done with current trim/split tools. Just a nice touch that would add to Moi's freehanded approach... Have you seen the videos of the metaball modelers Teddy and ShapeShop (a.k.a. BlobShop) ? they have an interesting curve "eraser" that works just by scribbling a wavy line across the segment you want to erase. Somehow the program recognizes your intent as an eraser, not as a new curve. Of course it doesn't have the accuracy required by CAD. But it's interesting...

jonah

> Have you seen the videos of the metaball modelers Teddy and ShapeShop (a.k.a. BlobShop) ?

Yeah I've seen that it is pretty cool. Gestures kind of worry me a bit in general, with too complex ones seeming to be pretty hard to remember, but that scribble=erase one is pretty good exception to that, it's easy to remember and I think distinctive enough that it gets recognized with a really high accuracy rate.

- Michael

i think a "scribble" could be integrated into a precision workflow, if Moi knows to remove a segment based on a few simple rules:

**stop at the closest intersections, quads, and knots
**remove segment if scribbled on segment of a polyline, remove section of line if scribbled on line.

customizable of course ;)