Shape won't fill

[AntonM]

What am I doing wrong?? This shape refuses to fill.

(XXP 5.1.0.8917 -- I haven't d/l the update as I don't want to have to go through the rigmarole of setting up my settings more often than I have to)

[steve.ledger]

How did you create the shape Anton?

[gwpriester]

Yep that sucker won't fill for me.

Sometimes the result of path operations, specifically shapes resulting from a path operation, can be difficult like this one.

A work-around is to convert the line to shapes and break shapes.

[AntonM]

Okay -- this is probably unnecessarily complicated... but here's how it came about.

I'm tracing the floor plan of a church, including the woodwork. The result needs to be imported as WMF into a Word document, and (rather fussily) I don't want Word to muck up line widths (I don't know that it will, but I've seen Word do the weirdest things). So I'm converting most lines to shapes. There probably is a better and an easier way of doing it as (or more!) effectively. I'm happy to scrap my complicated system and use a simpler one.

This thread is not intended to ask for help with my drawing, but I'm curious as to why any set of steps would produce what looks like a simple shape that won't fill, although the colour bar shows it as being filled.

The attachment was the result of multiple "convert to editable shape" -> "convert line to shape", and adding and editing the result, using various forms of "combine shapes", and "break points". If anyone really wants to know the exact process, I'll post it, but it's quite painful! The actual shape was quite a complex one, but I deleted almost all the points except the last 4, in the hope of finding a rogue point (which I didn't). I did however feel that you can't get a lot simpler than the quadrilateral I attached, so I posted it in the hope that someone might be able to show me what I did wrong.

I have noticed that Xara sometimes does things I don't understand when using "combine shapes" -- e.g., new points "hidden" under existing points, points out of sequence, bits that I expected to have been isolated by "break points" are not isolated but are part of another bit of the shape in a completely unexpected way. I can't give a good example here as I haven't really recorded what happens -- I just muddle through every time.

[steve.ledger]

OK.

Well select the shape, use the shape editor to select one point (I chose the top left) and press 'b' to break the point. Use the shape editor to pull the line away a tad then back to rejoin it. It then fills.

[AntonM]

Thanks Sledger and Gary. I'll try that.

I wonder what the difference in the digital representations of the two shapes would be -- the one I attached and sledger's edited one. Is there anything that might show that?

[gwpriester]

When you combine shapes, what you have described often happens. Not sure why except each control point probably represents a different path. And removing one point can often product an undesirable effect.

If you want to navigate around the points, select one of the points with the Shape Editor Tool and then press the Tab key repeatedly until you reach the overlapping points.

[gwpriester]

Brilliant Steve.

[handrawn]

this happens to me occasionally, importing from inkscape/illustrator

what I do is this:

copy the shape to clipboard
place a rectangle with no outline behind the shape
give the shape no outline [ so it becomes invisible]
select both shape and rectangle and intersect shapes
paste back in place the original shape from the clipboard
select both and combine shapes

should now have an editable filled shape

yes this is a longer way round than Steve's method, but it avoids breaking the shape and re-joining, which sometimes gives unexpected results

[Rik]

Hi Guys.

I did both the exercises.

Broke the shape and re-joined it again and it then fills.

I also did the 'copy to clipboard' 'intersect shapes' 'add shapes'
A great lesson for me. Simple for some but very useful for me.

Thanks indeed.

Rik.