Line Shadow Tool

Jacques Pochoy frequently details his site plans with 'line shadows'. These are parallel lines, all of the same length and typically evenly spaced, drawn at an angle from an object. He wants a tool that will take the tedium out of drawing these.

In the dialog for this tool, you could set the angle of the line and the distance between the lines. Like the Grid Line tool, there would be a bunch of buttons for preset spacings. You should have the option of placing lines or hatching. There would be rotate buttons under the sample window. Jacques would also like to have the option of some randomness in the line spacing, perhaps a 'noise' option.

As I see it, the tool would allow you to click on an object and drag to determine the length of the lines used for the shadows. Jacques says an interactive length is sufficent and no fixed length option is necessary.

Like the Grid Line tool, I would allow the user to Option-click with the Picklefork cursor on any line in the drawing to adopt a line angle.

Comments, please.

Alfred Scott

Derek's idea

I was cruis'n through the think tank and looked at J.P.'s Shadow Line Tool request and a thought occurred to me. Why not have the line angle and length a dynamic thing? The idea would be to click on a target line and drag away in the direction (the angle) and to the length of the desired shadow lines. The tool would create and show live all the parallel shadow lines that would be at the same angle and same length of the line being created by the drag. This could be the end of the tool process but you might also consider having the tool continue by moving the mouse away from the release point. This would have the effect of dynamically increasing and decreasing the spacing between the shadow lines. A final click would complete the action. IE: by drawing any one of the shadow lines in this picture, all the others would be created automatically. I reckon it would be a pretty slick tool. Derek Dubout

I think this is an intriguing idea. Basically, it's a linear patterning tool that places a series of lines in a drawing. However, I would like to identify a full range of images that might be placed along a curve. For my own use, I would provide the ability to place a series of X crosses of lines. I use these to indicate a weld. Alfred

Hmm, this sounds much more like a variant of the linear patterning tool which requires a pattern or object to be identified before commencing. The tool I think Jacques and I are talking about is just lines which means you don't have to declare any object. Just select the tool and go. Both seem worthy of consideration, I'm just not sure they are the same tool. Derek

I have been thinking about this, though. Back in the days of hand drawing we used to draw hash marks to indicate the direction and degree of slope. While replicating this might be beyond the scope of this tool [because it depends on how far away the next contour might be], the idea still has illustrative merit. I admit that I don't see any further application of the proposed tool. This is probably more indicative of inherently poor creativity than anything else, but nothing is jumping out at the moment. Michael Spencer

To my mind, it would be a very slick tool to have, but I wouldn't see myself using it except for in presentation type renderings done primarily in PowerCADD. In my office, those are quite common for several people here, but no so common for myself (I mostly use FormZ to Photoshop/Illustrator). So I personally would prioritize other areas of work, but that's just due to my particular workflow. It seems that the tool is a variant of the thicken tool, which could be used to achieve the same effect and more: thicken a particular element, then hatch or fill the resulting polygon. I'd imagine it would be desirable to have the "shadow" geometry on a layer other than the "line" geometry, to avoid masking problems (if fills rather than the resource-intensive hatches are used). Erik Mar

I have been using the parallel line tool in the polyline mode with a fill for a shadow box effect for notes that are important.  Is this what the shadow line tool meant to do? Jonathan Herr

Like that idea for a shadow line tool. Andy Caldwell

Francois Tribel sent the examples above of how he draws pitch in plane. He would like to have alternating long and short lines, and for the possibility of having two or more short lines between the long ones. He asks for the ability to make the master line dashed or not. Here he is talking about the original curve. He points out the problem of lines crossing over each other in tight turns, as shown above. He also ask for ability to have the lengths of the lines taper off at the ends, as shown above. In this case, Francois is talking about an interactive linear patterning. You can do all this above with the Linear Patterning tool, but the length of the lines would not be interactive. Alfred

My thoughts so far: Right now, this can be done by drawing a line, then using Linear Repeat, parallel offset or duplicate the original object and then trim the lines using the Trim tool and finger technology. The question that comes up is whether this is something you do often enough to justify a new tool. I think the tool should be more general and solve a drafting problem with a variety of ways, thus I don't think we should have a Line Shadow tool, but rather a Shadow tool. Shadows could be created by lines, solid or transparent objects, perhaps several objects with shades of transparency. In the case of lines, the angle should be fixed or variable, and the length should be fixed or variable. I am assuming that the shadow would act like a shadow, so it would only happen on the 'dark' side of a closed shape, and not on the side of the 'light source'. Alfred