segments

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Modeling - Drawing

Segments

The piece of a spline between two anchors, and the five things you can do to one.

A segment is one piece of a spline: the run between two neighboring anchors. Everything here needs the spline open for editing, which is what double-clicking it does.

Nothing happens until the pointer has traveled past the canvas's drag threshold, so a click that lands on a segment cannot reshape it by a pixel of hand tremor.

Click selects the piece

A press that never becomes a drag is a click, and it selects the whole sub-spline that segment belongs to. Everywhere else on this canvas a click selects and a drag moves; a segment used to be the one place where the drag did something and the click did nothing at all.

Drag moves it

Both of the segment's anchors travel by the drag, and their handles travel with them, so the piece keeps its shape and goes where you put it.

This is the gesture that changed. A plain drag used to bend a curved segment; the free bend now lives on Control-drag, below. If a tutorial of yours shows a segment being reshaped by dragging it, that footage is out of date.

Option-drag takes the slack out

Hold Option and the two handle angles are held while only their lengths change. This is the way to tighten or loosen a curve without disturbing directions you set on purpose.

The modifier is read on every frame rather than at the press, so Option can go down or come up in the middle of a drag; the curve lands in the same place whichever moment you pressed it.

Curved segments only. A straight one has its control points sitting on its anchors, so there is nothing to tension.

Control-drag bends it freely

Hold Control (Command on a Mac) and the drag reshapes the curve freely: both the angles and the lengths change, and the two anchors stay where they are.

Control or Command is not sloppiness. Control-click is a right-click on a Mac, so Control-drag never reaches the canvas there.

Note

This one is not Glyphs. Glyphs gives a segment three behaviors, the three above, and you bend by dragging a handle there. Locus had a free bend on the plain drag; matching Glyphs took it away and left no way to reshape a segment by dragging it, so the bend came back on its own modifier. It is a real difference, and worth knowing if you arrived from there.

Curved segments only, for the same reason as Option-drag: a straight segment has nothing to bend until Option-click has given it handles.

Option-click makes a straight segment curved

Option-click a straight segment and handles appear on the two anchors either side. They land at the third points of the chord, which is the cubic that traces the same straight line, so the shape does not jump on the click. It gains the handles you then drag.

Option-click, not Option-drag. The drag is the tension gesture above.

Delete straightens it again

Select a handle and press Delete and that handle goes, so the curve runs straight on that side. Deleting one of the two leaves the segment curved, which is allowed; deleting both makes it a straight segment again.

This reads a handle selection only when no anchor is also selected. A selection holding both means the anchor is going, and its handles go with it.

A smooth neighbor comes along

A smooth anchor at either end swings its far handle to stay collinear, so a bend or a tension carries into the next segment too. That is smooth continuing to mean smooth while you reshape its neighbor. A corner anchor holds its other side still.

When it refuses

An end driven by a construction point cannot move, so the whole piece is held rather than stretched by one end, and the reason is said once at the press.

• A curved piece: "That piece has an end on a construction point, so it cannot be moved. Drag a handle to reshape it."
• A straight piece: "That piece has an end on a construction point, so it cannot be moved. Option-click it to add handles, then drag a handle to reshape it."

The advice differs because a straight piece has no handle to drag yet. Option-drag and Control-drag only move handles, so they stay available either way.

Related

• Splines: anchors, handles, spans and sub-splines.
• The spline menu: the right-click commands, including Insert Anchor.
• The Pen: drawing a spline, and pulling handles as you go.
• Add Extremes: putting an anchor where the outline reaches furthest.
• Selecting objects: how anchors and handles are selected in the first place.

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