Chapter VII: DESIGN ENVIRONMENTS

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The Artwork Technology

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Another unusual technology is Artwork, which provides general-purpose sketching facilities. To obtain this technology, use the Change Current Technology command of the Technology menu and select "artwork".
Figure 7.5
This technology has nodes for many typical graphic objects such as rectangles, triangles, circles, and arrowheads. Polygonal and Spline nodes allow arbitrary shapes to be defined. Text is created with the New Special Object command of the Edit menu. Of course, nodes from all other technologies can be used as special electronic symbols when artwork is generated. Conversely, these artwork nodes can be used to embellish designs done in all other technologies.

There are four different polygon styles: opened, closed, filled, and spline. The opened polygon can be drawn with solid lines, close-spaced dotted lines, far-spaced dotted lines, or dashed lines. These nodes require that you use the Polygon Edit command of the Edit menu to describe them. Note that the spline curve does not run through the trace points, only near them.

Circles can be outlines or filled. The default shape is round, but elongation of the node produces an ellipse. In addition, by using the Get Info command of the Info menu, the outline circle can be reduced to a portion of the circle (from 1 to 360 degrees).

Arrow heads can be drawn in two different styles: simple or filled. The simple arrow head is the default and consists of two lines. The filled arrow head looks better because it is made of polygons. Use the Artwork: Arrows Filled subcommand of the Parametrize Technology command of the Technology menu to switch the graphics for all arrows.

The final feature of the Artwork technology is its ability to set the color of any of its nodes or arcs.
Once a node or arc is placed, use the Artwork Color... command of the Edit menu to change the color or pattern. Predefined patterns are available along the top of the dialog. The overlappable colors are taken from the current color map, which in turn is taken from the most recently selected technology (other than the Artwork technology).
Figure 7.6


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