SonoDraw Help | About SonoDraw

Tutorial: drawing a new pattern

Starting a new document

On the start of SonoDraw, you will be presented with a blank pattern. You can use this as a starting point or load an existing pattern from disk by choosing the menu option File | Open... or File | Open Recent.

We'll start with this pattern by first resizing the drawing area and setting up the object layout grid. To do this, click the Inspect button to the right of the toolbar, which brings up the document inspector. We want to increase the drawing area slightly, so change the pattern width and height to 2000 microns. Changing the values and clicking to the next field will change the document to reflect this new size.

Document inspector

We also want to change the grid spacing. All drawn objects are aligned to the grid, which allows for precise, even spacing of features. Change the grid spacing to 200 microns and click on any of the other fields to observe the change in the drawing.

The last field you can set is the feature size. This is used for illustration by allowing a preview of what the pattern will actually look like when it is dispensed. It is also used in the Microplotter to determine how far apart to space the lines that make up the overlapping pattern in a rectangular fill region. We will leave that alone for now

When done, close the inspector window.

Zooming out

The new pattern will no longer fit in the window, so we will need to zoom out. The ability to zoom a document are contained in three places: a pop-up menu in the lower-right-hand corner of the pattern window, the Zoom tool, and the View menu. The pop-up menu contains preset scale factors for a variety of scale ranges, from micron scale to actual size. The Zoom tool lets you zoom in by clicking on the document or selecting a region to zoom in on. You can also zoom out by holding the Option / Alt key while clicking on the document. Finally, the View menu contains options for zooming in, out, and to fit the window.

We want to fit the document in out window, so select Fit In Window either from the pop-up menu or the View menu.

Drawing spots

Pattern of spots and lines

We first want to draw a grid of spots. To do this, select Spot from the toolbar above the pattern. This puts SonoDraw in the mode for drawing spots. Move the mouse over the upper left corner of the grid. Notice that as you move the mouse, the current coordinate in the pattern under the mouse pointer is displayed in the lower-left-hand corner. Click once to draw a spot, which will be snapped to the upper-left corner of the grid.

Create a grid that is four spots wide and three tall by continuing on in this manner.

Drawing lines

Next, we want to do a box made of lines. Select the Line tool from the toolbar like you did earlier for the spots. When drawing a line, the first location you click on will set the starting point of the line. The second will set the end point.

Draw a box below the grid of spots by placing one line after another.

Editing existing features

Let's say you were unhappy with the placement of one of the lines. As these are vector elements, you can do as much editing as you want after the lines have been drawn. To edit a feature, pick the Select Items tool in the toolbar to switch to feature editing mode and click on the line you wish to edit. Control points will appear for both ends of the line.

You can move the whole line by clicking and dragging on the body of the line, or move each endpoint individually by clicking and dragging on the respective control point.

The line can be removed by hitting the Delete key or selecting the menu item Edit | Delete while the item is selected.

Any editing action, including drawing new lines, can be taken back by selecting the menu item Edit | Undo.

Saving to disk

Finally, when you are ready to save the document, pick the menu option File | Save As... or File | Save . If you have not saved the document before, you will be asked to choose where to save it and what name to give it. The pattern files that are saved by SonoDraw have the .pattern file extension and are text files using an XML-based format.

After saving, the pattern files can be loaded into a Microplotter's control software and printed onto a surface.

More information

For a step-by-step walkthrough of all menu items and drawing tools, see the help document Using SonoDraw.