Gradient colour for a line

[MarcT]

Thanks Mark, I'll have to remember this one!

Marc

[handrawn]

of course the 'line' round a shape is not really a line its a 'shape outline'

here is a an unclosed line that looks closed but it isn't - with Marks cilpview applied [see xar file - done freehand so quite a few nodes - may take a while to open]

done just to see if I could do it

[bcire68]

You are right Bill it doesn't work for enclosed shapes, the line would have to be broken so that defeats the object I suppose.

Not really. I guess you could create a second shape with just a line and no fill, break it at a point and then apply the clipview. It is a work-around but then so is everything else we have been talking about.

Eric

[bcire68]

Steve beat me to it.

Eric

[handrawn]

no breaks - this was drawn as a line taking great care not to let the nodes join up at the ends [need to have your freehand detect taken right down in registry - mine is set at zero - or the darn thing will just join automatically ]

[Riftvalley]

Thanks for all your help.

Seems it is not a straight forward option in XaraX. The best I can muster is to simply simulate it by copy paste enlarge and subtract. As in attachment.

The problem with this is that the line thickness varies around the circumference.

I did think that I could use intersect, but the intersect function takes no account of the line thickness, ie if the intersecting shape has a line width of zero or 100pix the result is as if there was no line - so this won't work.

Many thanks again

Martin

[ss-kalm]

If you want to do it that way, the take the shape, add a bevel (size to suit) - change the light elevation to 90° to flatten out the bevel and add the gradient fill to the bevel - add as many colours as you like to the gradient. You could also make the shape itself transparent to give a line effect.

[Riftvalley]

Thanks Keith

That seems to be the answer - I will now experiment a bit.

The fill and the bevel (line!?) can be filled independantly as you say.

Martin

[ss-kalm]

More playing and investigating:

If you add a bevel to a single line (start with external bevel so you can see what your doing) , change light elevation to 90 and add a linear gradient you can adjust the bevel internally to fill the line. The line still exhibits all the properties of a line and can still be shaped with the shape editor.

Have included the .xar for anyone interested.

[sheri-chan]

Hello. I just read these posts and try things out sometimes for practice (mostly when I'm killing time at work ). I don't really know what I'm doing. I was trying to do what Keith suggested - I got as far as adding the bevel, adjusting the light elevation and then it came to a screeching halt. How do I add a gradient fill? Sorry for the stupid question!