Path clean-up commands and Corners in Vectornation by Zaweba
A tour of the Object, Path menu in Vectornation by Zaweba: divide, split into grid, clean up, reverse, simplify, offset and live Corners with chamfers.
Under one menu in Vectornation by Zaweba sits a toolbox of commands that work on paths as a whole. Object, Path holds the jobs you reach for when a drawing needs tidying, dividing or adjusting in bulk, rather than point by point.
The list includes add and remove anchor points, divide objects below, split into grid, clean up, reverse, smooth, simplify, offset and Corners. Some you will use every day, others once a month, but knowing they are there saves a lot of manual work.
Adding and removing points in bulk
Add anchor points and remove anchor points work across the selection rather than one point at a time. Adding points is useful before you distort a shape, because more points give it more places to bend. Removing them helps when a path is heavier than it needs to be.
Divide objects below and split into grid
Divide objects below uses the selected path to cut through the shapes beneath it. Think of it as using one shape as a cookie cutter on everything under it. It is handy for slicing an illustration along a curve or creating sections in a background.
Split into grid divides a shape into a grid of smaller pieces. It is quick for building tiled layouts, calendar blocks, panel designs or a set of equal boxes to hold content.
Clean up, reverse, smooth, simplify and offset
Clean up removes the debris that collects in a file: the kind of stray bits that are invisible but get in the way. Run it before sending a file to print or to a cutter.
Reverse changes the direction of a path. Direction matters for type on a path, for objects placed along a path, for brushes and for some stroke effects, so if text runs the wrong way along a curve, reverse is often the cure.
Smooth softens the shape, and simplify reduces it to fewer points. Together they tame paths from freehand drawing or tracing.
Offset creates a path a set distance outside or inside the original. Outlines for stickers, a keyline around a logo, a border inside a badge and an inline effect on lettering all start with an offset.
Corners, kept live
Corners is the most interesting of the set. It rounds corners with round, inverted round or chamfer, at a radius you give. You can apply it to chosen points or to every corner, and the result is kept live, so you can change the type or radius later without redrawing.
Round gives the familiar soft corner. Inverted round cuts a curve into the corner, which suits ticket shapes and decorative frames. Chamfer cuts the corner off at an angle, which suits labels, technical parts and signs. Version 0.9.15 added relative rounding for corners, which scales the rounding to the shape rather than using one fixed radius.
A sensible order
When tidying a shape for output, a good order is clean up first, then simplify or smooth, then Corners if needed, then offset for any outline. Clean up removes the junk that would otherwise confuse later steps. Simplify gives you fewer points to work with. Corners shapes the final outline, and offset follows the finished shape.
Mistakes to avoid
Simplify and smooth change the shape, so compare against a copy on important artwork. Divide objects below cuts everything beneath the path, so make sure only the shapes you want are underneath, or lock the others first. And remember that live corners stay live; if you need the corners as plain points for another program, expand the shape before exporting.
Used together, these commands in Vectornation by Zaweba handle most of the bulk path work a file will ever need.
