correct path direction

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Modeling - Editing

Correct Path Direction (command)

Wind every closed contour by how deeply it nests, so a counter reads as a hole.

Command palette: Correct Path Direction | In depth: Reverse Direction

Important

Under construction. Splines are new and this page describes work in progress. Nothing here is a promise about the finished feature.

The rule it applies

Every closed contour gets a direction decided by how many other contours it sits inside:

• the outermost contour winds counterclockwise
• the ring inside it winds clockwise
• and so on, alternating inward

That alternation is what makes an enclosed ring read as a hole rather than as more material. It is the convention every outline format expects, which is why a drawing that disagrees with it exports wrong while looking right on the canvas.

How to use it

Select the splines you want it to work over and run it. With nothing selected it works over the whole drawing, which is usually what you want: a winding that disagrees with its neighbors is exactly the thing you cannot see by looking.

• Nesting is worked out across everything it was given at once, so a ring drawn as its own separate object is still recognized as a ring inside another.
• Open runs are left alone. An open run has no inside, so it has no winding to correct.
• One undo step covers the lot.
• It reports how many contours it reversed out of how many it checked, or that every one already wound the right way.

How it differs from Reverse Direction

Reverse Direction flips what you picked, whichever way it was running. This decides the right answer for you and only changes the contours that disagree with it. Run this one and a contour already winding correctly is not touched.

What it turns down

It works on splines only. Run it with nothing but circles selected and it says to select a spline rather than reporting that there was nothing to do.

Locked and managed splines are skipped.

Related

• Reverse Direction: flip one thing by hand.
• Show Curve Direction: see which way contours run.
• Add Extremes: the other pre-export pass.
• Regions & booleans: where winding decides an outer boundary from a hole.

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