Moho Animation Forum

How does one break a Freehand Tool drawing line and retain the shape of the line?

I draw a line using the Freehand Tool and then I want to break the line in two parts. I use the Delete Edge tool anywhere on the line and the line breaks, but the line on both segments totally disappears. It is all gone but the construction dots and lines. When rendered it is a blank space.
Breaking the Freehand line, deletes the Freehand line.

you could:

1. do as you have done, and then make the 2 resulting segments into new shapes

2. use 'hide edge' to make the in-between segment invisible

3. use line width to reduce the in-between segment to 0 width.

Thanks for your reply :

Response:

1. Doesn´t work, can´t get my original tapered and proportioned freehand line back.

2. I want to break the line in pieces , not hide it. Why is there a delete edge tool if it does not appear to work with a freehand line one draws?

3. Does not break the line in pieces like I want, just makes part of the line invisible.

Note: in other vector programs one can break the line at any point and the shape of the line is not lost.

@Toontoonz - can you use the script Draw/Split Curve by selecting the two points on the line and splitting it by adding 1 or 3 nodes then delete the middle one?

Interesting suggestion - I tried it and wow---that creates new problems with a Freehand tool line - almost needs to go in the bug forum section perhaps.

For example, I drew my curvy, tapered freehand tool line with min/max of .25 to 20.
Then used the script you suggested and put in the number 3.
Totally flattened the skinny end of the line for about 10 nodes on the other end - wider line - the last part of the line was bent and a junk seemed to be missing - probably just twisted out of the way.

Every new line I did and different number of points I added with the script changes the line differently. Interesting sometimes bizarre results, sometimes nothing changed. Maybe someone else can experiment with it and report if they found some strangeness.
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So I then tried the "Delete Edge" tool after running the script you suggested - same effect as before: the line is broke in two pieces; however, the line disappears with only the construction line and nodes left. It renders invisible - nothing there.

Might be able to make a script that splits a curve at the currently selected point, keeping all of the other parameters (like the width) stable. Just makeing one shape into 2. I'll check it out when I can get more than 3 hours of sleep.

Workaround: duplicate your layer, delete all the points on each layer except for the line segment that you want to keep. Then copy and paste the two line segments into the same layer if you wish.

That seems the way to do it.

Have thoughts, ideas, suggestions on solving this one:
http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2799