Find Center Of Line

[R C-R]

30 minutes ago, Alfred said:

If you want a circular arc, why would you start with a straight line instead of an ellipse?

Or, depending on what you want the shape to look like, maybe the Pie or Crescent tool with a suitably thin cross section. Those shapes can be edited at any time so you are not locked into one shape.

[firstdefence]

3 hours ago, ASUNDER said:

I still don't like that I can't modify the length of the node handles both at the same time.

On mac this can be achieved using Control + Drag. Holding shift as well keeps the handle steady, so Control + Shift + Drag.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

On mac this can be achieved using Control + Drag. Holding shift as well keeps the handle steady, so Control + Shift + Drag.

FWIW, on Macs when the Node Tool is positioned over a node's control handle the status bar (a.k.a. the hint bar) will show "Drag+⌃ to preserve handle ratios" as one of the options. (⌃ means the Control key on Macs.) So this does not necessarily keep the lengths equal if they are not equal to begin with, but it is still a useful option.

The Control key can also be used to move a node without moving the end point of its control handle(s), so similarly when the Node Tool is positioned over a node, the Status bar will show "Drag+⌃  to move just nodes."

There are additional options that use the Control key like removing nodes from a selection, & they also display Status bar hints.

I mention this mostly just to emphasize how useful the status bar can be & its dynamic nature.

[ASUNDER]

10 hours ago, Alfred said:

If you want a circular arc, why would you start with a straight line instead of an ellipse?

My original explanation is if you already have a line among other lines and you changed your mind about it being straight.  This is the circumstance that happened to me and not finding a middle node helper I came to ask about it.
A middle node would also be helpful for adding another line branching off of it; if you want the new line right in the middle.  And to make a snap candidate for elsewhere.
The 'split curve after point' is a killer shortcut; that's the one I will be using when I need it.

10 hours ago, Alfred said:

Me too neither, but having modified the length of one of them you’ll get little marks across both handles when you drag the second one  to the same length as the first.

My bad, it is in there.  You hold left mouse and then right mouse button at the same time while dragging a node handle.  They keep their ratio.  If they were equal to begin with they will remain equal.  Not seeing the marks your are talking about though.

[ASUNDER]

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

Or, depending on what you want the shape to look like, maybe the Pie or Crescent tool with a suitably thin cross section. Those shapes can be edited at any time so you are not locked into one shape.

Ah I didn't see those two, thank you.  The segments shape would have come in handy with my air craft carrier pic.  And if I want a grassy hill but a square bottom on it.

[ASUNDER]

So I discovered that the pen tool has a middle of curve snap candidate.  That's the one I would want for the node tool.

 

Here's another example of my complaint.  The clouds I drew in my scene:

They are basically cylinders with protruding ends.  Or rectangles capped with semi circles.  I could have used the segments tool, come to think of it, but that would mean multiple segments per cloud and joining them together, just for a few simple curves.

I tried using half circles and that was a pain in the bon bon.  Also tried using the mouse with the pencil tool.
Ended up getting out the tablet stylus just to draw those curves.  It's vector / clip art style, so they had to be perfect (neat) looking, or it would be incongruent with the rest of the picture.

So I could have drawn two rectangles, joined them together, added a node halfway up the vertical splines, converted them to smooth, dragged them out and bam it's done.

[prophet]

Another option could be rounded rectangles with corner radii of half the height of the rectangle. 
Or even a single line with very large stroke width and rounded ends, then outline the stroke. 

[ASUNDER]

37 minutes ago, prophet said:

Another option could be rounded rectangles with corner radii of half the height of the rectangle. 
Or even a single line with very large stroke width and rounded ends, then outline the stroke. 

These are very good tips, thank you.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, ASUNDER said:

they had to be perfect (neat) looking. (…) So I could have drawn two rectangles,

… plus two ellipses and press "Add".

[ASUNDER]

2 minutes ago, thomaso said:

… plus two ellipses and press "Add".

Perfect.