jerwin

My double click speed (In System preferences) was set to be somewhat low. I've increased the speed towards a middle value. I'm getting slightly better results. Here's the sequence of events: user double clicks on element name element name becomes editable. user types "F" element name reverts to label ("F") in blink of the eye user/keyboard buffer types "ig space 17", which sets the fill to 17 percent.

I'm double clicking the name. It's intermittent.

I'm doing some technical drawing, and it suits me to label certain curves with the names of parts they represent. Thus,. I might have a curve that should be labeled "Fig 11". Unfortunately, the act of labeling a curve can result it being labeled as "F", the selection of the fill tool, and an opacity of 11 percent. Not what I want. Is there a preference change I can make that can better interpret my typing style/keyboard? (MacOS 10.14)

It's not too bad to start the curves in polygon mode, and then edit the nodes.

Here's an earlier attempt. The pattern pieces are filled in curves--and I can rotate and translate them individually. It's just that there are so many individual annotations to draw in-- grainlines, text, etc that I had thought thatI could save time by using masks, or stencils.

I'm a real beginner, both at using this software, and at vector illustration. For this project, I'm working with antique pattern magazines. Typically such a magazine would print its patterns on a single sheet of tissue paper, in a confusing mass of overlapping lines-- which would the user would trace out one by one on separate sheets of paper. An example sheet can be found here http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/periodical/pageview/3103767 What I would like to do is use bezier curves to copy pieces of the underlying bitmap-- so that the various grainlines, and reference numbers are preserved-- and then manipulate those pieces like a jigsaw puzzle-- rotating them, translating them, etc. I am somewhat unfamiliar with the jargon-- so it's quite probable that my scheme has a simple solution that I've overlooked.