Brush (Use)

Brushes (Use)

Related Information

Brushes Palette

Design Brush

Brush Scratch Pad

Brush Use Table

The Brush Use table provides a preview container for a set of previously designed Brushes. This table is designed for convenient, quick, simple, single click, selection of Brushes while drawing. Similar to a tool palette, one click on the Use button and the desired brush is set for use on the next drawing stroke.

This table is designed to for the actual use of a set of Brushes. The focus here is not editing or designing brushes. Brushes should be designed, debugged and tweaked using the Inspect tab before loading in this table. The quickest way to edit a brush in this table is to Apply it to a graphic on a drawing then switch to the Inspect tab, leaving the graphic selected.

This table is accessed from the Use Tab of the Brushes palette. The Brushes palette is accessed from the Tools main menu, about one third of the way down.

This table shows each brush in the brush Use container. The table is scrollable and the panel resizable, so adjust as appropriate for the task at hand.

A Selected brush shows with a Red border. This table allows multiple selections. Note that Selecting a brush is different than placing a brush in Use. Only one brush may be in Use at a time. A brush in Use is indicated with a darkened black border and all other brushes are dimmed.

The Use button, seen lower left corner for each brush, provides a fast access single click point to place a brush "in use" for drawing activities. No need to double click, a simple single click places the associated brush in use. When "in use" new paths, curves, graphics are created and drawn with the defined Brush as the stroke for the graphic. The brush remains "in use" until the Use button is clicked again.

The Apply button (just to the right of the Use button) is similar to the Use button but in this case the associated Brush is applied to one or more existing graphics on a drawing. The target curves, paths, or graphics are selected on the drawing, the Apply button will enable, click the button to apply the brush to all the targets.

The Brush Method is displayed top right corner for each brush entry in the table. The assigned name shows in the top left corner. These cannot be changed from this display of the palette, change back to Inspect tab to change the name or Method.

The Minus button is used to remove all selected brushes. Caution, no undo support here. Learn to check the two count numbers at the top right corner of the brushes table, there you can see how many brushes are selected and confirm consistency with your expectations before clicking the button.

Click the Export button to save all selected brushes to a text based file on your hard drive. The process saves only selected brushes, to select all brushes click on the top brush - scroll to the bottom - shift click on the bottom brush. The file is human readable, it is a text file using XML formatting. And the file conforms to the macOS property list format, so the contents may be inspected with the Property List App. The Plus button (lower right) is used to read a Brush archive file saved previously with the Export button.

The Copy button (at the bottom of the table) will move the selected brushes to the system Clipboard. From there you may paste the Brush with Paste Special, or you may Paste the brush into a User Library (using the small menu at the bottom of the User Library window). Or paste the brush as a path(s) in a drawing.

Click the small "X" at the lower right of a brush entry to deselect the brush.

Two small numbers show at the top right of the table. The first indicates the count of brushes in the table, the second indicates how many are currently selected.

The Use table is fully compatible with User Libraries. Drag and drop is supported in both directions between the Use Table and the User Library Name and Element views.

If the Brush Style setting (for the Color and Style parameters) is From Brush, then the Use table will show the brush's color. If the Brush Style setting is From Path, then a dark gray color is used on the Use table. The choice for Fill or Outline only for the display on the Use table is derived from the Color and Style parameters (regardless of the Brush Style setting) applied to the Brush Stroke Path at the first design step. This arrangement allows user control for the appearance on the Use table, but the settings need to be considered at that first design step. For example a Sine wave brush would start out as Outline only (no Fill), but the solid curvy arrow (seen the example to the right) should be set to have Fill before sending the path to the Brush Scratch Pad. This seems complicated, but natural usage and drawing techniques should lead to the proper results with little thought.

This table is intended to be dynamic and configured for specific drawing projects. It is not intended as a permanent persistent archive for valuable brush designs. Use a User Library or Export your brushes to a persistent file on the hard drive so that backup regimens and Time Machine will have backup copies in case they are needed.

Paths in the Use list are saved when EazyDraw quits and restarts. The paths are saved in a property list text file in the Application Support folder assigned to EazyDraw by macOS. This information will not normally move from system to system or to future installations of EazyDraw. Use Export capability found at the bottom of the Use Tab table to generate a persistent archive for important tables of brushes.