I think it would be nice to have a "maintain aspect ratio" check box when creating a custom bitmap pattern.
If you use the bitmap fill on an object, you can then select the "interactive fill" and scale/skew/position/stretch the bitmap within the fill. On the interactive toolbar there are small/medium/large tile for pattern buttons - these restore the bitmap's width/height ratios, but keep the rotation, skew and position.
To maintain aspect ratio when re-sizing, just grab the dot.
Unfortunatly there are no "skew" or "rotation" fields on the interactive toolbar to either reset or put in precise values.
The only other thing I have found is that the constrain for moving this dot or the stretch handles works from the midpoint of the object rather than the 'node' being edited. (I like the fact that these snap like any other nodes) And the "Mirror" button automatically restores the fill's position and rotation, but keeps any changes to the size/aspect ratio.
I would like to see the buttons leave the scale/skew/position/stretch of the fill alone and simply do what they should. To re-set these fields I think you should double click on them (either the nodes or the value fields on the interactive toolbar)
{But I agree - would be nice to have an option to 'lock' the aspect ratio in that dialogue}
Oooh just thought on a cool thing : Draw 8 had a photopaint plugin called "Terazzo" that did some funky tiling stuff - I would like to see this incorporated into the bitmap fill tiling... {I can't see anything like it in X3 }
Hey Gadget,
I know how to use the interactive fill option for the bitmap and i know what you're talking about with the small, medium, large and with the resizing but i still don't see the maintain aspect ratio option. I can enter it manually if i know the exact dimension of the bitmap being used or i can "eye-ball" it with the interactive tool, but i don't see any way of importing the bitmap and automatically have it maintain its aspect ratio. Is there something i'm missing or is this option not there? Regardless, thanks for the tip.
I just noticed that you mentioned at the end that there is no "lock" aspect ratio. I thought i was missing something. I really like the terrazo idea too, very cool, almost wish i could find my copy of DRAW8. (probably couldn't run it on vista anyway, oh well.)
hmmmm... you're right: Initially I just tried with the bubbles fill and since the small/medium/large buttons re-set the width and height to non-equal sizes I presumed that this was in relation to bitmap's origional aspect ratio.
Since then I tried with bitmaps I know are oblong - bad things: these buttons destroy the aspect ratio and are not even square.
As a tip for getting bitmaps to the correct size: when you're in the "load" dialogue, hovering over a bitmap will give you it's W x H in pixels. Type these numbers into the width/height fields with a "px" prefix {eg 100px} and it will automatically convert to whatever units you work in {eg ->8.467 mm}
You know, I would go as far as to recommend that people customise this toolbar and remove these buttons completley: even what they appear to do right, they do wrong.
What I would like to see in their place is big [+] and [-] buttons to increase or decrease the size of the bitmap - by (eg) 20% of what it currently is. (While maintaining the aspect ratio ;)