Operation Manual

Table Of Contents
Shaping objects | 169
Shaping objects
You can shape objects in various ways.
This section contains the following topics:
“Working with curve objects” (page 169)
“Shaping curve objects by using Reflect Nodes mode” (page 174)
“Cropping, splitting, and erasing objects” (page 175)
“Splitting objects” (page 179)
“Trimming objects” (page 181)
“Filleting, scalloping, and chamfering corners of curve objects” (page 182)
“Welding and intersecting objects” (page 184)
“Creating new objects from boundaries” (page 184)
“Creating PowerClip objects” (page 185)
“Smudging and smearing objects” (page 189)
Adding twirl effects” (page 192)
“Roughening objects” (page 193)
“Shaping objects by attracting or pushing away nodes” (page 195)
Applying distortion effects” (page 196)
“Shaping objects by using envelopes” (page 198)
For more information about working with paths and subpaths, see “Reference: Shaping objects” on page 200.
Working with curve objects
Objects can be shaped by manipulating their nodes and segments. An object’s nodes are the tiny squares that appear along the object’s
outline. The line between two nodes is called a segment. Moving an object’s segments lets you make coarse adjustments to the object’s
shape, while changing the position of its nodes lets you fine-tune the shape of the object.
Most objects that are added to a drawing are not curve objects, with the exception of freehand and Bézier curves. Therefore, if you want to
customize the shape of an object, it is recommended that you convert that object to a curve object. By converting objects to curves, you can
shape them by adding, removing, positioning, aligning, or transforming their nodes. You can join two or more open curves or arcs to make
a single curve object, and you can convert curve objects to ellipses, if they have a basic ellipse shape to begin with. You can also copy and
cut curve segments, and then paste them as objects, making it easy to extract subpaths or create adjacent shapes with similar contours.