Grid

Revision as of 13:49, 11 February 2012

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Introduction

You can add a grid of horizontal and vertical lines to your canvases to help you to position items precisely. The grids won't appear in your finished animations, but they will be saved with your documents. Each canvas has its own grid. The spacing of the horizontal and vertical lines in a grid can be changed independently, so you can have grids made up of rectangles as well as grids made up of squares.

If you imagine the grid's lines are made of metal, ducks act like magnets around grid lines, snapping onto them when they get close enough. This means that, using grids, it is easy to ensure ducks are in particular places.

Position ducks, vertex ducks, tangent ducks, radius ducks, width ducks and angle ducks can all snap onto grid lines. This means that you can use grids to accurately position anything and everything in Synfig Studio.

Appearance

A grid looks like this when you display it in the canvas window:

As you can see above, the grid appears as grey dashed lines that extend across your working area to the edges of the canvas window.

Showing and hiding a grid

There are four ways to show or hide a grid in your canvas window. You can use a button on the canvas window toolbar, you can use the Canvas View Menu, you can use the Options dialog box that you'll find on the Canvas File Menu or you can use the Canvas MetaData Panel.

Using the Canvas Window Toolbar button

There is a show/hide grid button on the canvas window toolbar.

• When the button looks like this the grid is hidden. If you press it the grid will be shown.

• When the button looks like this the grid is shown. If you press it the grid will be hidden.

Using the Canvas View menu

You can open the Canvas Menu using the Canvas Menu Caret button and then use "View → Show Grid" to hide or show the grid.

Using the Options dialog box

You can open the Canvas Menu using the Canvas Menu Caret button and then use "File → Options" to display the Options dialog box.

You can use the "Show Grid" checkbox to show or hide the grid, and then press the "OK" or "Apply" button.

Using the Canvas MetaData panel

Enabling and disabling snapping to a grid

The grid does not do anything until snapping to the grid is enabled. Once snapping is enabled, when you move a duck close to a grid line it will "snap" onto it, in much the same way as a magnet will snap onto a piece of metal. Once a duck has snapped to a grid line you will find it takes a stronger than normal movement to detach it from the grid line, again as if you were pulling a magnet off of something metallic.

Having ducks snapping to grid lines is usually very useful, but sometimes it can be very annoying! Fortunately you can easily turn snapping to the grid off.

There are four ways to enable or disable snapping to the grid in your canvas window. You can use a button on the canvas window toolbar, you can use the Canvas View Menu, you can use the Options dialog box that you'll find on the Canvas File Menu or you can use the Canvas MetaData Panel.

Using the Canvas Window Toolbar button

There is a enable/disable snapping to the grid button on the canvas window toolbar.

• When the button looks like this snapping to the grid is disabled. If you press it snapping to the grid will be enabled.

• When the button looks like this snapping to the grid is enabled. If you press it snapping to the grid will be disabled.

Using the Canvas View menu

You can open the Canvas Menu using the Canvas Menu Caret button and then use "View → Snap to Grid" to enable or disable snapping to the grid.

Changing the spacing of grid lines

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