dhb

I've been using lots of design software for years (2D & 3D), and let me just say Designer is the best I've ever used.  It's intuitive, smooth and rich. 
The core of my work is architectural & engineering design (so I use a lot of CAD software) and it occurs to me that, if Designer had an option to set scale it would also serve as a nice, simple CAD program.  i.e. you could start an A3 sheet, set the scale to 1:100 and then when you draw a 1000mm line it produced a line 10mm long on the document. 
It's just a thought, I realise CAD is not the target market, and the programmers have got better things to do with their time.
Dan

I've been using lots of design software for years (2D & 3D), and let me just say Designer is the best I've ever used.  It's intuitive, smooth and rich. 
The core of my work is architectural & engineering design (so I use a lot of CAD software) and it occurs to me that, if Designer had an option to set scale it would also serve as a nice, simple CAD program.  i.e. you could start an A3 sheet, set the scale to 1:100 and then when you draw a 1000mm line it produced a line 10mm long on the document. 
It's just a thought, I realise CAD is not the target market, and the programmers have got better things to do with their time.
Dan

I've been using lots of design software for years (2D & 3D), and let me just say Designer is the best I've ever used.  It's intuitive, smooth and rich. 
The core of my work is architectural & engineering design (so I use a lot of CAD software) and it occurs to me that, if Designer had an option to set scale it would also serve as a nice, simple CAD program.  i.e. you could start an A3 sheet, set the scale to 1:100 and then when you draw a 1000mm line it produced a line 10mm long on the document. 
It's just a thought, I realise CAD is not the target market, and the programmers have got better things to do with their time.
Dan

I've been using lots of design software for years (2D & 3D), and let me just say Designer is the best I've ever used.  It's intuitive, smooth and rich. 
The core of my work is architectural & engineering design (so I use a lot of CAD software) and it occurs to me that, if Designer had an option to set scale it would also serve as a nice, simple CAD program.  i.e. you could start an A3 sheet, set the scale to 1:100 and then when you draw a 1000mm line it produced a line 10mm long on the document. 
It's just a thought, I realise CAD is not the target market, and the programmers have got better things to do with their time.
Dan

I've been using lots of design software for years (2D & 3D), and let me just say Designer is the best I've ever used.  It's intuitive, smooth and rich. 
The core of my work is architectural & engineering design (so I use a lot of CAD software) and it occurs to me that, if Designer had an option to set scale it would also serve as a nice, simple CAD program.  i.e. you could start an A3 sheet, set the scale to 1:100 and then when you draw a 1000mm line it produced a line 10mm long on the document. 
It's just a thought, I realise CAD is not the target market, and the programmers have got better things to do with their time.
Dan

To my mind you've made this overly complicated.
A much simpler approach would be to have a rectangle with a seamless concrete texture as a fill, then apply a soft black to white or dark grey to light grey gradient with  and set its opacity until it suits your taste.
 

As far as I can see, the rectangles themselves do not have any visible component, so you would need to blur the fills. Would you be able to blur the bottom edge of the top concrete image and the top edge of the bottom fill. It is difficult to be precise without knowing the details of the various objects.
John

The only thing that pops up in my mind is to remove the concrete images from the rectangles, add a Gaussian Blur filter to the rectangles to soften their edges, rasterize the rectangles, and then bring back the concrete images.