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ProArtisan2

The complete ProArtisan2 manual

Draw mode

Click on the Draw icon on the Tool pane to enter Draw mode and then press MENU with the pointer on the canvas. This brings up the Draw menu which deals with all drawing associated with geometric shapes such as lines, rectangles and polygons. It also contains the text menu. The items in this menu use the Draw module resident in ROM and so the manipulation of the objects will be familiar if you use Draw.

All the items in this menu are drawn in the current colour, which can be changed using the Palette menu. Colour opacity is not implemented in these options.

Frisket - all the Draw items can be used to draw in the frisket. You select either Set Frisket or Unset Frisket from the Palette when in Create Frisket mode. For example an outline rectangle with no fill will clear an outline rectangle or set an outline rectangle in the frisket depending upon which of the two colours is chosen in the palette. This control is further enhanced with stroked and filled shapes.

Rectangle

To place a rectangle position the first point by pressing SELECT and drag out the rectangle to the required size before releasing SELECT to fix it. The rectangle is drawn in the current colour and takes account of the Style setting discussed later.

Ellipse

The ellipse is placed in the same way as the rectangle above.

Polygon

The polygon item has a sub menu where you can select the shape of your polygon.

Use the arrows to select from 3 to 32 sides and place the polygon by clicking SELECT to define its centre and drag out to define its size and orientation. Use a 32 sided polygon to create circles.

Line

Lines and Curves generate paths. When the path is complete they are stroked, filled or stroked and filled depending upon the settings in the Style sub menu. Stroked means that the line is drawn using the line thickness set in the Style sub menu. Filled means just that, the area inside a closed path is filled. Filled and Stroked is only noticeable if you have the Style sub menu set up so that the outline or stroked colour is different to the fill colour (see page 36).

Lines are created by clicking with SELECT to define a start point. From here you can either drag out the line to the end point before pressing SELECT again or just click SELECT at the end point. This second point also forms the start for the next line segment. When you click on another point a line is drawn from the last point to the new point. To complete editing click with ADJUST. Note that you can either click all points for the line to be drawn between or you can drag out a visible line by holding down SELECT, whichever you prefer.

If the Style menu is set to Closed then the last segment of the line is drawn to join up with the first point. In addition if you click a point close to the start point the program automatically takes this as being the last point without the need to press ADJUST. If Open is selected in the Style menu then the lines finish at the last point and do not join up. This is best seen if you use the Style menu described on page 36 to have a filled shape with a different coloured outline.

Curve

This works in a similar manner to the Line item. Curves are automatically smoothed at joins. For sharp changes in direction place points close to one another or complete a section with ADJUST and start a new one.

Text

Click on this item to bring up the Text dialogue box.

You can now click on OK or Cancel . OK will remove the dialogue box and place the text at the end of your pointer. To paste the text click with SELECT to drop the text in the current colour and opacity. When the text is pasted it cannot be removed s it is now a bit image and in fact it can be accessed from the Sprite pool. To remove text from your pointer press MENU.

Clicking on Cancel returns you to the canvas without the text at the pointer. It should be noted that Text is not designed to provide anti aliased text. If you place text onto a multi coloured background anti aliasing does not work. The text item provided by ProArtisan 2 is written as a sprite with a Frisket around it. This makes it very easy to rotate and scale the sprite based text and also enables you to add various textures and fills to your text.

Style

This dialogue box enables you to define how the drawing objects, except text, will appear.

The thickness of the line is shown as a circle and also numerically. This can be altered using the bump arrows or by dragging out the circle.

The top right area can be toggled between Stroked, Filled or Stroked and Filled. The graphic changes to reflect the differences. The first two colours in the Picker are used for the stroked and the filled area. If only one colour is in the Picker then black is also used but make sure that black is not the only colour in the Picker. The icon to the right of the number is used to select whether the joins are Butt, Round or Square. Toggle between the options by clicking on the icon.

Finally the last icon is used to indicate whether the lines and curves should create closed or open objects.

Grid

This item provides an on screen grid to help with positioning. It is not part of your picture it is simply overlaid. The grid is turned on by clicking on the Grid item in the menu.

You can select the colour to be used for the grid so that it is always visible but unobtrusive. You can set the size of the grid from 2 to 256 pixels using the bump arrows.

The icon in the bottom left is a padlock and can be toggled to have Grid Lock on or off. As shown above the grid lock is active. Note that you cannot have Grid Lock active without a Grid on screen.

APDL