Inkscape tips

[Jonnycakes]

When you are drawing lines, note that you can link together series of lines by continuously left-clicking and not ending the line. If you finish by clicking on the box marking the starting node of the first line you drew, it will complete into a polygon which is select-able as a single object. Alternatively, make a square, select it, then press "Shift+Ctrl+C". This will allow you to move the square's nodes individually and add more nodes to the sides of it by double-clicking (also deleting nodes by selecting them and pressing "Delete").

Either way, you can then select the polygon, open the "Fill and Stroke" dialog ("Ctrl+Shift+F"), and fill the object with color (and edit the line properties such as width, color, etc.). Also fill the white-side-up polygons with white, as you will be overlapping the polygons to form layers rather than terminating lines into other lines. You can use "Page Up" and "Page Down" to raise and lower objects (polygons) as layers.

[Ondrej.Cibulka]

Someone really draw the squares? I allways make square with polygon tool, because I work with corners and rectangle tool is useless.

[966623]

I use both the rectangle and polygon tool for rectangles and squares, depending on what I want

[Jonnycakes]

Someone really draw the squares? I allways make square with polygon tool, because I work with corners and rectangle tool is useless.

For diagramming purposes the two tools are essentially the same. You still need to convert the object to a path to individually manipulate its vertices anyway, so the only advantage is getting the exact number of vertices when you place the shape. I mostly end up copy/pasting objects anyway, so for me it is a moot point.

[kevin89]

@Brimstone: Instead of drawing lines and filling ing that space with the paint bucket, you create a square with the square/rectangle tool (F4 on my keyboard), which creates a four sided polygon that has a fill included in it. If you want to learn to use it, just play around with it like I did. You can also create a polygon with more sides by double clicking the edge of the polygon to create a new node, or draw the polygon with the pen (next to the pencil icon) to draw the shape, and just click the square that is where you first clicked to close the polygon and make it filled.