How to change notch thickness?

Is it possible to change the notch thickness? I have looked in the application and pattern preferences and do not see the option. Whatever thickness it is set to by default is not thick enough to be clearly visible when I project my pattern. My current workaround is to export as SVG and then edit the notch thickness in Inkscape. However, it would be nice to cut out this extra step for something so simple.

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Hello & welcome to the Seamly forum @zane

I managed to increase the line weight of the notch by adjusting it in the Application Preferences:

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The maximum line weight is 2.11mm. I think it should show on the projector.

(Note to @Douglas : Is this working as it should? Increasing the line weight of the seam line didn’t increase it, but it did increase the line weight of the notch.)

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Which I based on QCad’s pen weights… 2.11 is a bit bigger than the typical ISO sizes that you would find in a set of Rapidograph drafting pens.

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Note: One may wonder why a line weight of Zero? It’s a Qt quirk, that treats a pen width of 0.00, as 1 pixel wide.

No it’s not. There’s several issues going on… the seamline is not displaying correctly in Piece mode, but it is in Layout mode. The notches display as a hairline pen in Layout mode, but the seam and cutline display correctly. Unfortunately the pieces in Piece and Layout modes are built 2 different ways.

I’m going to see if I can add a seperate setting for the Notch lineweight, then see if I can resolve the seamline pen issue in Piece mode.

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Ok. I think I have the notch lineweight issue solved. Instead of setting a seperate lineweight for the notches I decided it’s better to use the “cutline” path lineweight, as generally the notches are more associated with the cutline… especially if you’re going to project the pattern pieces. The notches will now display with the cutline weight correctly in Piece and Layout mode.

Screenshot 2024-11-30 125237

Screenshot 2024-11-30 125222

Fixing the seamline display in Piece mode is going to be trickier. The issue lies in the fact we need the pattern piece to be transparent. To get the “seam allowance” to fill, we need to create a graphicItem that is the cutline path with the seamline path knocked out so it’s hollow in the center, except that means the cutline item now has an inside and outside path… which overlaps the seamline. That’s why we can’t see the seam line. You can’t create a single graphicItem that has a different pen of an inside and outside path. The solution will be to add a 3rd graphicItem just for the “SA fill”. So the piece will consist of a cutline path with just a pen, a seam allowance fill with no pen but with a brush fill, and a seamline path with a pen and a brush (which could be a No Brush) fill. So now when the 3 items stack, they will all be visible AND we maintain a transparent piece.

The seamline in layout mode worked correctly as there are no fills.

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Ok, I was just concerned that the notch line weight changed but the seam line didn’t. It really doesn’t bother me (and I don’t think anyone else) being a lower line weight, as long as the notches, cut lines & internal paths show up on a projector.

Thank you very much for checking. I really appreciate it.

And just for FYI, I find that 3mm line weight is very good for projectors - most people prefer it. :grin:

I added a 3.00mm item to the drop down. It’s very easy since I long ago subclassed the lineweight combobox and just need to promote a combobox in any dialog. All it needed is this:

addItem(createIcon(9.00), "3.00mm",       3.00);
setMaxVisibleItems(25);

And Voila! Any dialog that uses the lineweight combobox can now use 3.00mm

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And not only that I fixed the seamline, cutline and allowance fill. :slight_smile:

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The pink seamline is .50mm for comparison. And for simplicity the allowance filll color is (still?) the cutline color.

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Thank you very much, @Douglas. You’re a :star2:

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You’re welcome.

BTW… I aggerated a bit - I forgot I had to bump the schema to be able to validate the added 3.00 mm lineweight (or as saved in the pattern just 3). :roll_eyes:

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