Edit grid pattern

Grid edition is available when the Grid Edition thumb is selected in the control panel. When this mode is selected you can resize the grid, add and remove black cases or images and fill the grid with words.

Resize the grid

Grid can be resized by pressing

in the toolbar or from the menu Edition > Grid size ...

Then a dialog box is displayed, enabling you to enter the new desired grid size.

The fields in the Current Size box are not editable and just tell you the current size of the grid. The fields in the New Size box can be modified to specify the new size.

The small 3x3 control grid enables to specify in which direction the grid will be extended or cropped. It is useful when your grid already contains something. I.E. if you select the upper left case, new cases will be added / removed at the bottom and on the right of the grid.

Add black cases

You can add and removes black squares by selecting the Bloc tool in the Control panel.

Once selected, you can add a bloc on the grid by clicking left on a case. It will be removed if you click again on the bloc. You can also remove a case from the grid by clicking right on it. A "removed" case behalves like a block. The only difference is it will not be painted when the grid is printed.

An example of what you can get by adding black squares and removing cases is pictured below:

Handle symmetries

The control panel has a drop list box enabling to handle symmetries.

When symmetry is selected, symmetrical black squares are automatically added or removed to follow the changes you make to the grid. It allows to quickly designing grid patterns with a given symmetry.

A black square is painted in RED if it doesn't correspond to the selected symmetry. It enables to catch unwanted black squares in a look.

Available symmetries are:

Horizontal symmetry: cases are symmetrized along a vertical axis.
Vertical symmetry: cases are symmetrized along a horizontal axis.
Orthogonal symmetry: Combination of a Vertical and Horizontal symmetry.
180 degrees symmetry: cases are symmetrized by a rotation of 180 degrees.

The following symmetries are only available if the grid is a square.

90 degrees symmetry; cases are symmetrized by rotations of 90 degrees.
NO-SE symmetry; cases are symmetrized along a bottom-left top-right axis.
NE-SO symmetry; cases are symmetrized along a bottom-right top-left axis.
Diagonal symmetry; cases are symmetrized along the two diagonal axis.

Add pictures

You can add pictures on the grid by selecting the Image tool in the Control panel.

Then click on the case of the grid where you want to add a picture. A dialog box is prompted to select the image you want to add:

Click on the button ... in the Picture box in order to select the image file on your hard drive you want to add to the grid. Once done, your picture is displayed in the reticule in the bottom left of the dialog.

You can change the location of the picture and the number of cases it covers. When size is changed, the reticule on the left is updated in order to see the distortion that will be applied to the image.

Work with patterns

It is also possible to load predefined black squares patterns thanks to the menu Edition > Load pattern. When selected, the following dialog box is displayed:

Grids found in the selected directory are listed on the left part of the box. When such a list is selected, it is previewed in the panel Pattern preview. Click on select to replace your current grid with the selected pattern.

Any grid saved on disk can be used as a pattern. Only the black squares and pictures are exctracted when a grid is loaded as a pattern.

Press the CTRL key and roll the wheel of the mouse to zoom in and out quickly.

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