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Topics - wulfae

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Quilt Assistant / Experiences using the program.
« on: 31 August 2013, 18:10:15 »
First off, fantastic!! I'm really excited to have a program that is designed to do this, since I haven't really designed paper piecing patterns before and can use all the help I can get.

I'm coming from an art background more than a quilting one, so I'm always using photoshop and flash keyboard shortcuts.

Here are my impressions!

My immediate problem was zooming, and controlling it. I have a 21UX cintiq, which is a monitor from Wacom that you can draw on. Not the one linked, but that's close enough. As such, I am using my stylus and not my mouse. The zoom on the mouse wheel was a nice surprise when I discovered it, but what I would really love are some keyboard shortcuts to zoom. Specifically (since they're pretty standard photoshop ones) control + and -.

It would also be nice to not have the project you are working on snap to the upper left corner of the screen when you maximise the window. I was able to get around that a few times by keeping it in the window, zooming to an appropriate level, and then maximising it.  However, if I adjusted the zoom level at all, it snapped to the upper left corner of the screen.

I am in love with the photoshop option of having your canvas in the middle of the screen, and then being able to move it so that whatever corner I'm working on is in the middle. Specifically, 'full screen with menu bar'. If you're unfamiliar with the option I'm talking about, here's a video explaining it in exhaustive detail. (sorry.)

I also use the photoshop hand tool (brought up with the spacebar) to move the image around the screen, instead of the scroll bars on the bottom and side. It's a little easier to just move it from a point, instead of having to adjust two settings.

The piece that I'm trying to do is a very large applique piece for the background of a very large pictorial quilt, so it's not quite what your program was designed for. However! Here is how Quilt Assistant has worked for me, so far.

I tried to zoom in to the level I wanted, and then maximise, but the image was caught on the lower right corner of the screen. I couldn't manipulate the scroll bars to work on it at all, so I basically had to just work on it in a window. I wasn't able to replicate the error, so... Not sure what happened there.

I was also having difficulty doing lines that ended at the division I wanted them to end at. It kept extending to the next one, which was annoying.

When I try to right click with my stylus, it won't recognise it. It thinks it's just a normal click. I'm not sure how hard it is to have the program work with wacom drivers, and I know not many people have cintiqs, but I'm sure there are some users with bamboo or intuos tablets in the crowd.

It would be nice if I could somehow indicate an irregular outline, even with just a heavy paintbrush line. That would also be nice for indicating details like embroidery or something like that. I just tried to add in a border that I was going to make all the same group and name something else, but it changed all of my names. Also colours, for some reason, I just had to re-colour it. Then I was trying to rename groups in the shape tree, which I just learned about in the pdf documentation, when I learned that you can't 'undo' a name change. I got a nice, friendly 'Don't Panic' message. (Combined with the dolphin image used in the first tutorial, I'm going to conclude that you are a Douglas Adams fan, haha.)

Is there a way to add stitching order? Mine goes A>B>C ABC>D F>G FG>H etc. Eventually it all connects. I just wanted to write it down now, while I'm thinking about it.

I also really, really like that you've added in ways to print something larger by having a glue edge. I was confused at first, since it wasn't mentioned in the documentation, but once I thought about it for a second, it made perfect sense. Thank you!! Some of my pieces are too large, even with the paper set to 11 by 17. (Which I will be printing on, at staples, eventually.)

I don't seem to be able to scroll through the pages using the scroll button on my mouse, I have to click the little arrows next to the page number. It would also be nice to have an indication of just how many pages this is going to be, without having to go into the full preview window and then click that little arrow until it won't show any more pages.

I think that is everything! Thanks again for the program, I am really excited to do the next ten bookshelves I need to do and then print it off and start! The paper piecing is making the background of this quilt much more exciting.

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