Hi All,
I just found out today about seamly2D and I love it! Very easy to use and just what I was looking for. I’m too lazy for pattern drafting on paper ;-).
One issue I’ve come across to which I cannot find any solutions online:
When I have made a pattern piece and view it in Piece-mode (detail mode?), the lines are not the usual black but they are very light grey. This makes it very hard for me to see the piece. When I watch other people on youtube, I don’t see the difference in saturation of the lines. Am I doing something wrong?
Thank you very much in advance for anyone taking the time to help me out!
Are you sure you’re in Piece mode? When in Draft mode only the current block is in black, while any others are greyed out. Can you post a screencap so we can see what you’re looking at? Also if you can tell us which build version you have that might be helpful if there is an issue.
Something else for you to look at is check the Preferences… if the version you have has this in the Prefs, it may be a case where you need to change the line weight of of your paths (lines). This is a new (Piece & Layout mode) feature, where if you have the width set low, it may appear grey? If so I might need to look at making sure the default(s) match the “old” line weights.
I was actually in Piece mode, and I had also found the application preferences through another forum post, which didn’t work out.
But, now I tried it again and it indeed works if I put it on the higest! Yesterday I didn’t see any of difference while I THOUGHT I had changed it to the highest weight, but I changed it only to 0.35… (which is the last one in the list if you are a fool like me and don’t realize there is a vertical scroll bar in this dropdown ;-))
I downloaded the program yesterday, so it seems that the default is indeed a bit too light… Especially if you make more pattern pieces and have to zoom out to fit everything in your view, it was really hard to see.
Do you know what the line weight is in draft mode, so I can set it to match?
Hmm, I hadn’t thought of this being an issue, since viewing it at near actual size has never had that problem for me. However, when zoomed out a bit it does get a bit hard to see the lines. When viewing a 6foot table at a distance that makes it look 20inches, I don’t expect to be able to see the lines on it very well. So I wonder if the problem is that Seamly is simulating what the line weights would actually look like at X distance.
If it helps, these are screenshots I made real quick yesterday. I think this is already a bit higher line weight than the standard, because as I said I did figure out how to change it, but didn’t change it enough.
With this simple square it’s not that much of an issue but with multiple large pattern pieces on my paper it was near impossible to edit them.
I can fix that to eliminate the scroll bar and show all the drop down items… which I just did with the color drop down on the current feature I’m working on.
I believe it’s 1.0… I need to check the code though to be sure.
UPDATE:
Ok… I looked deeper into the code and now I know what I did wrong… the default line weight is hardcoded to 1.2mm, but it has to be converted to inches, and then to pixels (ie the DPI which I believe is 90 dpi). So the values in the drop down, which are supposed to be mm, are being used as pixels… which any “real” number value is just going to be rounded to the nearest integer… and if it’s zero Qt uses that as a “cosmetic” pen with a width of 1 pixel. Which is going to look grey compared to a 1.2mm or a 4.25 pixel line - that is ((1.2 / 25.4) * 90). So any value in the dropdown that’s 1.40 or less will be 1 pixel and the rest… 2 pixels where we should be getting anywhere from 1 to 7 pixels in width.
I’ll just insert a couple new getter functions that will call the default getter functions and convert the values, and we should be good to go.
I’ll have to check what it’s currently doing, but theres 2 ways to display a line… maintain the width regardless of zoom factor OR scale the width with the zoom.
Previously the line weight in Piece & Layout modes was hard coded… I just added the line weight so one could go up or down from the hard coded 1.0 (?). I’m thinking it would be better to main the line weight, much like I did with the point names and the leader lines.
Ok… I fixed the line weight display in piece and layout mode… changes are pushed and waiting for PR to be merged.
Indeed it was just a matter of converting the mm default prefs to pixels. Also note I also fixed another existing issue with the internal paths, where the lines were zooming, instead of maintaining the same line weight. BTW… in case anyone is wondering I refer to the pen width as line weight VS line width - a line weight maintains the same width regardless of the zoom factor where a line width changes with the zoom factor.
Also of note… I did make sure that the line weights default to 1.2mm to be consistent with the existing line weight, although I thought they were 1.0mm. IMO the default should be 1.0mm as it’s an ISO 128 standard width. BTW - I also fixed the max num of drop items to show all - no scroll:
Also in case anyone is wondering… ISO 128 defines widths as well as colors. For example: the US National CAD Standard adopted ISO 128:
And for those familiar with drafting pens from the likes of Rapidograph, the width is color coded as per ISO 128:
The reason I mention this is in some manner I would like to add an option to semantically tie the ISO line weights & colors together… where if you select a line width it automatically sets the color or vice versa.
