Springrain: PLATE # 1: CREATING A VECTOR COMPASS USING INKSCAPE

STEP 1

Open up Inkscape and create a new document.

STEP 2

Create a small circle. Right click à Fill and Stroke. Make sure that fill color is white, the stroke color is black. Go to Store Style and set the width to 2.5 px.

STEP 3 A

Now select Stars and Polygon Tool. At the change toolbar make sure you have the following parameters:

Corners = 4

Spoke = 0.160

Randomized = 0.016

STEP 3 B

Create the star, making sure that CTRL is pressed, so that any rotation is based on 15 degree increments.

STEP 4

Align the stars with the circle by selecting both of the shapes and press Shift + CTRL + A for Align and Distribute. Select Relative to –> Page and click on –> Center on Vertical Axis and click on –> Center on Horizontal Axis. Both objects should be aligned with the center of the page.

STEP 5

Now select the star and duplicate it using CTRL + D. using press < to reduce the size. This is for the background to set of needles. Reduce it until you are satisfied with the size. Rotate it while pressing CTRL until the background needles are perpendicular with the main needs. Press END to send the object to the back.

STEP 6

Duplicate the original star and put this duplicate into a new layer, and scale down the duplicate.

STEP 7

Hide the old layer.

STEP 8

Edit the nodes of the star by converting the object to path. You can use SHIFT + CTRL + C.

STEP 9

Press F2 to edit the path by nodes. Select the 4 bottom end points of the star and click Break path at selected nodes.

STEP 10

Select the base vertices of a triangle and click join selected endpoints with a new segment. Keep doing thin until every triangle is completed. You may need to break each triangle apart and rejoin them again later so that its vertices do not interfere while you are selecting new nodes.

STEP 11

Select two base vertices and click Insert Nodes between Segments. Repeat this for each triangle. Each base segment has a new center node.

STEP 12

Delete a single base corner node from each triangle.

STEP 13

Make the previous layer visible again, move the new layer under the old layer and rotate each triangle of the new layer.