|
Lesson 4: Changing the Triangle In this lesson you will learn how to reshape a design by moving its knots and lines. You'll also be introduced to the undo and redo operations. Finally, you'll learn how to use the color palette and how to recolor a piece. If the Triangle design is not currently open, please open it now just as you did in Lesson 3. Press Enter to cause a Zoom All, and then press the "–" key twice to provide some working room around the triangle. You might want to remember this as you proceed through the lessons: after opening any file (or after doing a Zoom All) press the "–" key once or twice and it will often be easier to manipulate the design. Make sure that you are in Pick mode (the Pick toolbar button should be in). Also make sure that Show Knots and Show Colors are enabled and that Show Hairlines is disabled. Dragging and selecting Changing the shape of the triangle is easy. Move the pointer over one of the knots, press down the left mouse button, and then drag the mouse. When the knot is moved to the place you want, release the button. During the move you will notice that the lines to move become thin and that the adjacent colors disappear. This is because most computers are not fast enough to show thick lines and areas of color as quickly as you can move the mouse. (If your knot did not move, you probably need to position the pointer over it more exactly.) Sometimes you want to move something other than one knot. You might want to move several knots, an entire line, or any combination of these. To move more than a single knot you must first select the things you want to move and then drag that selection across the screen. Try this by clicking on the middle of any of the three lines of the triangle. (Do not hold the mouse key down for long: just click and let go.) The line will change color, indicating that it has been selected. Now drag the line around the screen and release it at some new position. Now click on another line. Notice how the first line you selected is now unselected and that only the new line is selected. Drag around the newly selected line. When you have experimented enough, click outside of the triangle to unselect any lines that were selected. The Ctrl key You can select more than one line by using the Ctrl key. Click on some lines again, but this time hold down the Ctrl key as you do so. Now selecting a line does not unselect a previously selected line. Click on a selected line while holding down the Ctrl key to unselect that line. When you have exactly two lines selected, try dragging them around the screen. The select box If you wish to select a large number of lines, you may find the select box useful. Let's select all three of the lines using this method. At some point above and to the left of the triangle, press down the left mouse button and drag the mouse. You will drag out a box, and when you release the mouse button every line wholly within that box will be selected. Drag out a box large enough to select the entire triangle, and then drag the entire triangle to another place in the view. Now click in the view away from the triangle to unselect all lines.
Nudging
For fine control, hold down the Ctrl key while you press an arrow key. This time your selection will move only a very slight amount. If nudging does not work, you might be using the part of the keyboard that combines arrow keys with the numeric keypad. If so, turn off Num Lock on your keyboard and try again. Deleting There are many things you can do to a selected shape besides moving it. Another operation you can do is to delete it. Let's try deleting lines from the triangle. Select one of the lines and then press the Del or Delete key. (You can choose "Delete" from the Edit menu if you prefer.) The line disappears, and the color of the triangle disappears with it. This makes sense, because only areas bounded by lines can be colored. Continue to delete lines until the entire triangle is gone. If pressing the Del key does not delete anything, you might be using the Del key on the numeric keypad. If so, turn off Num Lock on your keyboard and try again. Undo and Redo
Erasing
Close this design now by choosing "Close" from the File menu. When asked "Save changes to Triangle?" click the "No" button; otherwise, you would be permanently changing the design used in this tutorial, which you do not want to do. |
The
triangle is gone, but we can recover it. Nearly every operation in Glass
Eye 2000 is undoable! All you need to do is click the Undo button, shown at the
left. Click the Undo button until the triangle is restored. Each click of
the Undo button takes you back one operation, so if you deleted the lines of
the triangle one at a time then this should take three clicks.
If
you undo an operation by mistake you can "Undo the Undo," which is called a
"Redo." A Redo reverses the effect of a previous Undo. Try it now by
clicking the Redo button, which is just to the right of the Undo button. Go
ahead and Undo and Redo a few times to get a feel for these operations. Stop
at some point where the entire triangle is once again visible. Having Undo
and Redo available to you should make you more confident to experiment when
you use Glass Eye 2000: you know that most anything you do can be undone!
There is another way to removing lines that you might prefer to using the
Delete command. Click the Erase button, shown at the left, to put you in
Erase mode. Now hold down the left mouse button while you position the
pointer near one of the lines. Try this until the entire triangle is gone,
then use Undo to restore it.