Bevels and Fills

[jkantor]

I've applied fills to some beveled shapes. Sometimes the fill fills the bevel and sometimes it doesn't. I want to change some of the fills back to flat color fills - and sometimes that changes the fill of the bevel and sometimes it doesn't.

Is there some way to remove the bevels and fills from the shape completely and start over?

[Odat]

You can apply different fills to both your object, and it's bevel (which, I suppose technically, is treated as it's own object).

To detect this, you can use the selection tool in combination with the status line at the bottom of the main Xara window. If you click in the middle of your object, the status line will say "1 shape", "1 object", "1 quickshape", etc, depending on what it is.

If you click on the bevel, the status line says "1 bevel". You can then use the standard fill tools to change the fill.

If you set the fill for your object using drag and drop and you have a large bevel, it's quite easy to "miss" the shape and drop the fill onto the bevel instead.

To answer your question, you can turn off the bevel by selecing "None" from the bevel type dropdown list, and you can set the fill of the object to anything that you want.

[Intbel]

Is there some way to remove the bevels and fills from the shape completely and start over?

Select your bevelled shape.
Select convert to editable shapes.
Select ungroup.

Your shape and the bevel will now be two separate objects.

[gwpriester]

Welcome to the Xtreme Conference jkantor.

Select the beveled object with the Bevel Tool, then from the drop down list of Bevel Types, select None. This removes the bevel.

To change the fill back to a solid fill, just select the object then click on any fill color on the screen palette.

As my friends have already mentioned, you can apply a separate fill to the object and to the bevel. There are a few ways to do this.

If the object to which you apply a bevel applies the fill to the bevel depending upon the object's fill. So if an object has a gradient fill, the bevel will have the same gradient fill. If the object has a bitmap fill, the bevel will too.

You can drag and drop any color onto the object or the bevel to change one or the other. If you have a beveled object with a Linear gradient fill, you can drag and drop a color to the top of the bevel and drag and drop another color to the bottom of the bevel.

You can Ctrl click on the bevel to select just the bevel and then apply any kind of fill you wish without changing the object's fill.

If you want to apply a certain fill to both the bevel and the object, marquee select the entire object (drag a selection rectangle around the object with the arrow pointer--the Selector Tool), then apply your fill.

Play around with it. You can break it And if you really hate everything, remove the bevel (set the Bevel Type to none) and start again.

[jkantor]

Thanks for the help. It would be really nice if the online help explained things like this. (I should know, I wrote software manuals for 20 years.)

[Soquili]

Hi Jkantor,

Welcome.

If you are not aware, Gary provides great tutorials on his http://www.xaraxone.com site.

[bcire68]

Select your bevelled shape.
Select convert to editable shapes.
Select ungroup.

Your shape and the bevel will now be two separate objects.

Intbel,

Does that leave the bevel a vector object? When I import a drawing into flash, it always converts any bevels to bitmaps. It would be great if it would leave these vector to help keep my drawings sharp and file sizes down.

I realize that this might be the import into flash that is converting to bitmap, but it would be nice if I could get everything over in vector.

Thanks,

Eric

Never mind... Tested it myself and the bevel still comes over as a bitmap....bummer.

[Intbel]

Never mind... Tested it myself and the bevel still comes over as a bitmap....bummer.

Not exactly - 'tis a vector shape with a bitmap fill.

See attached.

[bcire68]

Clarification noted...

However, it remains true that if I want a bevel in flash that remains completely vector, I will need to draw each of the sides and fill them myself. This works fine for flat style (sharp cornered) bevels, but for rounded ones, it becomes problematic.

Oh well, will have to go on the last minute wish list to Charles-a-Claus or maybe Flash-a-Claus?

Eric