I'm examining the samples included in the Tutorial and there are some interesting uses of Create Tiled Clones. But I have not been able to find a way to expose the settings that were used in those creations.

I have tried opening the CTC dialog and then selecting the cloning original in the pattern but all that seems to do is give me the opportunity to create a new set of tiled clones with a new repetition pattern. I've tried looking at the properties of the original object, but the fact that it is the master for clones does not seem to appear in those properties.

Surely there must be a way to fiddle with such settings after you see what the first result looks like. But I cannot find anything about that in any of the Create Tiled Clones tutorials that I have found. It appears that the workflow is to try some settings, then undo, then try different settings, then undo , etc. That does not help me explore how the Tutorial examples were created.

Editing the SVG file is not really an option, unless it would be a one-time thing to make something available, rather than attempting to edit it iteratively.

Any suggestions? What obviousness am I overlooking?

AugustM

Surely there must be a way to fiddle with such settings after you see what the first result looks like.

No such way with tiled clones. 

Many operations in Inkscape are one-and-done; the same for most extensions. 

That said,

• Some extensions have a  "Live preview" option before they are run.
• "Path Effects" ( formerly called "live path effects" or LPEs) are adjustable after application.

Thanks Tyler.

I was afraid that might be the case. At least there is UnDo available to help with trial-and-error corrections.

I think it's the distinction in what is saved in the file between what describes the object as it is vs. a description of how the object was created. Even a "Live Preview" option would not help in analysing how an effect was achieved after it is created, it just helps the workflow a bit. I guess that's what the "Live" in LPE originally meant: it's still there, live, to modify if you want to.

Do you know if there is a way of examining the properties of a clone to see how its transformation from the original is defined? I've found the tool that identifies which object is the original for any specific clone; is there something attached to the clone that says "this original object, this translation, this rotation, this scale, this style change, etc.?

I can imagine that it has not been built into the UI and is only available by examining the SVG, so maybe someone might have made an extension that would reveal that info. As a beginner, how would I go about searching to find out if a related extension has already been created?

Thanks again,
August

You can see some of the transforms for simple patterns by opening the XML editor and clicking on any particular clone. Things get complex fast once scale or rotation are added. Once you see matrix transforms in the XML, you can explore more here: http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Transforms.html#Transforms-Xml

Thanks. It's nice to know what can be done, and maybe eventually I'll get around to learning how. I can follow some of the math at first reading, so I may not be too far away.

Meanwhile, how would I go about searching to find out if a related extension has already been created? Is there an index of extensions maintained anywhere?

Thanks again.

As for iterative experiments, I just discovered the Remove button in the CTC dialog. That was not mentioned in any of the tutorials I've found so far. I guess it's a new addition.

If you select a clone, and then use Edit > Clone > Select Original, that will activate the Remove button in the CTC dialog. Clicking that removes all sibling clones of that original. That means you can UnDo the cloning, even if you've added other operations to the UnDo history. You can also use this to tell when you have an original selected because the button will un-gray.

That's useful. And apparently undocumented. (If you find it documented, please let me know.)

A few things you might find useful:

1. With a clone selected, Shift-D will select the original. (Compare with Ctrl-D to create a duplicate, and Alt-D to create a clone).
2. With the original selected you can change the parameters in the tiled clone dialog and hit Create to replace the existing tiled clones with a new set. No need to 'Remove' them first.
3. In the status bar, a selected clone is described as "Clone of...". Pressing Shift-D (possibly repeatedly) until it no longer says that will mean that you've got to the original.
4. If you accidentally press Shift-D too many times, the original remains selected, but the status bar says "Select a clone to go to its original...". So even if you've got a chain of clones, and clones of clones, pressing Shift-D many times will get you to the original parent.

Parts 28-36 of my tutorial series in Full Circle Magazine (free download) provide a pretty comprehensive guide to clones, including the tiled clones dialog. There might be some information in there that is useful to you.

Xav

Parts 28-36 of my tutorial series in Full Circle Magazine

Hi Xav,

Thanks for the tip. I've found the Full Circle site and their "Inkscape" tag, but I don't get any hits on your name/handle or on "tiled clones".

Could you give me the issue numbers, article titles, URLs, or anything else that I could use to home in on your tutorial series?

Thanks!

This was done by editing the CTC dialog properties so that the first stroke, the S-shaped one at the 6:30 position and going to the center, would tile as intended. When I had the CTC dialog right, I removed the clones, made a group out of that single stroke, then re-tiled the pattern. Subsequent strokes were added to the original group.

Interestingly, it didn't matter whether or not the new strokes were within the original bounding box. The outer circle was drawn, as an addition to that original group, at the top of the drawing. That means further additions do not strictly have to be added where the original is, but can be improvised off of any part of the total drawing.

AugustM

Thanks for the tip. I've found the Full Circle site and their "Inkscape" tag, but I don't get any hits on your name/handle or on "tiled clones". Could you give me the issue numbers, article titles, URLs, or anything else that I could use to home in on your tutorial series?

Sorry, I forgot to post the link. But if you'd searched this forum for "Full Circle Magazine" you would have found this topic:

https://inkscape.org/forums/tutorials/inkscape-tutorials-in-full-circle-magazine/

The first post has a link to my official index for the series, which then links to each magazine. As I mentioned, I mainly cover clones in parts 28-36. That topic is also where I announce each new part shortly after the magazine is released.

Thanks Xav. I've subscribed to your item above to get the notifications of new articles. Thanks. 

I also found a list of all the Special Edition collections of articles at https://fullcirclemagazine.org/inkscape-special-editions/. It looks like those go through Part 72 at this point (out of 98 so far this month...). I'll be downloading all 10 volumes for offline access. (I had just been looking at what it might take to extract the pages from 98 PDFs when I found the Special Editions. Sweet! So maybe I'll end up being the curator of Vol.11. But not this Summer, at least.)

As someone commented at your link above, this collection looks like one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date How-To manuals available. I am very glad that you are continuing to update it with the v1.0 features. Thank you very much.

Xav

With the original selected you can change the parameters in the tiled clone dialog and hit Create to replace the existing tiled clones with a new set. No need to 'Remove' them first.

This isn't working for me the way I was hoping. It only works as long I still have the file open where I created this clone set. It does not work if I close and reopen the file and use Shift-D to select the original in that set. The CTC dialog in this case just shows me whatever my last cloning operation was in this session, if any, not whatever made this drawing. Hitting Create then adds to the existing drawing, it does not replace the existing clones.

However, it does work, even across multiple instances of using CTC, as long as the file is still open. I suggest changing the wording to, "As long as you still have the file open, you can select the original and change the parameters in the tiled clone dialog. You can click Remove to remove all of that original's clones or click Create to replace them according to the new parameters."

Or something like that. I'm only getting this picky about it because I've been a tutorial writer for a couple of decades, I'm just a cold beginner at Inkscape.

Xav

With the original selected you can change the parameters in the tiled clone dialog and hit Create to replace the existing tiled clones with a new set. No need to 'Remove' them first.

I still think this statement is accurate. The point was just that there's no need to hit Remove first, if you just want to replace existing tiled clones with a new set that have different parameters. I've tested this with both 0.92 and 1.0, saving the file and quitting Inkscape between changes. What I said above holds true (at least on my system), even across sessions.

Note that what I didn't say is that the parameters you originally used would be re-populated in the dialog. The parameters aren't saved in your drawing anywhere, so this simply can't happen. In fact it doesn't even happen between multiple uses of the dialog within a single session: if you create two separate sets of tiled clones, the parameters don't change as you select each original object.

It might be a nice addition for Inkscape to save the parameters as well. There are a lot of controls in this dialog, so being able to retrieve the ones you used for any given set of clones would certainly make it easier to make small tweaks after the fact. But that's just not the way it currently behaves. I suggest opening a feature request if this is something you'd like to see in a future version.