A Little Exercise

Nobody is just dying to know what the spline tool can do? Alright Robo Master owners, let’s try a little something new! This is only for the adventurous as this little tool needs some taming. That is it seems to need a little taming. Really it is ourselves that need to get familiar with this neatest of all the tools in the tool box.

I must point out here that i am a self taught person here with computer drawing tools; really I don’t know that much but i made an eyelet edge with this tool. And it was sooo loonnggg ago that i ran across the spline tool that i don’t remember what program i found it in. That program is probably no longer available anyway. That was back in late Windows 3.11 or early windows 95 days.  But when i bought the Silhouette, there was the spline tool. I cannot tell you how happy i was! anyway, here goes….

With your ROBO Master open and a new ‘sheet of paper’, no carrier sheet or grid at this moment, we will make a shape. Click on the closed spline tool and click once on your sheet of paper, pull down a bit (about an 1”) and click again,

then go to the right just a tiny bit and you will see the spline open up and become a loop. Quick - double-click to anchor that point, you can always change it later.

Now take your edit point tool and grab the lower little square (node or anchor point) and when your cursor changes to 4 directional arrow (cross hair pointer), click and hold down mouse button while you move that node to the left and up to where it is in line with the other lower anchor point, let go the mouse button and you should have a rain drop. Or eyelet. Or egg. Whichever you like to think of your shape as. If you didn’t, just try it again. It takes a little getting used to. You make to big a move or loop back on an un-anchored shape and you can come up with some pretty wild shapes and the feeling that you are not in control here, the shape is. You can straighten the line out by going back or delete and start over.

You can further refine this shape buy right clicking while your cross hair pointer is right over the line and add anchor point. If you want to delete an anchor point you hold your cross hair right over the point you want to delete. To make a spline come to a nice rounded, but sharper, point add and/or move anchor point close to the anchor point you want more pointed.

This tool is remarkable in that it makes beautifully curved shapes where the polyline tool (which is easier for a beginner to use) seem more tamable and easier to use but takes more time to shape curves. I used the spline tool to get my scallop line for the lesson the other day and here are some example shapes for other possible projects using the closed spline tool….

 

Now maybe you can do something better.