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Drawing/Snapping to a single point?


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Is it possible to draw a single point in AD? As in, a single point, not attached to a path? Or is there another way to create an object to snap to that is a single point only - perhaps a small circle and snapping to its centre?

I have a complex drawing of a building to create, and need to align many irregular points into a triangular 'grid'. Because the grid is 'wrapped' onto the building, the triangles are not a uniform size or shape. It is critical for my project that they are actually triangles (3 points only, though the sides can be curved). My first attempt was to draw in the lines across the whole building and then use their (expanded) stroke to 'punch' out the triangles. This worked visually, but any inaccuracy  in the meeting points of the lines created 'clipped corners' on the main triangles, and small triangles in the joins.

After a few attempts, I think an approach could be to mark the intersection points on the grid, and then use those to snap the points along the lines, to ensure they cross accurately. This seems easy enough, except I can't think of a way to create a single snapping point that's not on a path.

Lastly, I need to place many hundreds (maybe thousands!) of these points manually, so a solution would need to be reasonably streamlined to be practical.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

triangular-grid.png

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Would the Grid and Axis Manager using the cube to fit your need or is it too straight?

Screen-Shot-2019-10-14-at-08-35-12.png

But there is no way to make a single node point, it would have to be a very small ellipse.

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Wow - I hadn't even seen those grid options - there's a lot to look at there! I've only been looking at the snapping manager until now, thanks!

I don't think it will help in my case because the angles and spacing of the grid aren't ever uniform - it's not really a 'grid' at all. I really just need a common snapping point for three separate lines, but using a small object gives 4 or more snapping points at the bounding box edges.

> there is no way to make a single node point, it would have to be a very small ellipse.

I've been experimenting with this - I think if I could set the snapping to 'snap to bounding box mid points' _without_ enabling 'snap to object bounding boxes', that would work. Makes sense that that's not an option though.

My latest plan was to place the small ellipses, snap lines to them, then go and select each group of 3 nodes directly and 'align center' them. This I think has uncovered a bug (or at least some unexpected behaviour) in AD. though - aligning nodes can convert them from sharp points to curves, and do strange things to those curves, so that the previously sharp corner becomes a tiny loop. I might raise that as a bug separately, because that definitely doesn't seem right.

That said, I concede I am doing something a bit weird, so it's no surprises I'm running into obscure limitations here and there!

Thanks again for your help.

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Mate - Add New Curve to Selected Curves Object is exactly what I needed, but I never would have thought to try it. You were so quick I missed it on my first view of your demo, and I was thinking "How are they leaving the ends of the paths open like that?". That's life-changing - many, many thanks!

Also, bonus points for your example: I had to double check we weren't tracing the same building!

 

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Not a big deal, but tor something like this, you might consider setting the stroke cap style to butt or square instead of to the default round style. This will eliminate the excessive number of nodes at the ends of the polygonal lines when you expand the stroke.

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