Creating a nice and simple rounded arrow

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GarryP

While the arrow shapes included with Scribus are great to start off with, sometimes you need something a bit different.

This tutorial will show you how to use various Scribus functions to create rounded arrow shapes quickly and effectively.

The tutorial is primarily intended to show beginners some of the Scribus functions they might not have used yet, but anyone can use the techniques.

Stage A

1. First draw three rectangles (I've made mine 100x30, 100x30 & 140x30 points in size but you can experiment) and round their corners using the "Properties" palette "Shape" tab (I've used 10pt rounding).

Stage B

2. Then use the rotate tool - or the "Properties" palette "X,Y,Z" rotation field - to rotate one of the shorter rectangles to 270 degrees (i.e. vertical).

3. Select both short rectangles and use the "Align and Distribute" palette to align them to the left and the top.

4. Select the short horizontal rectangle then shift-select the other short rectangle and go to menu "Item -> Path Tools -> Path Operations...". Keep the default operation of "Unites the Shapes" (the first icon) and OK the dialog. (If you select the vertical rectangle first you might find that the resulting merged shape flips round. If this is so just use the rotate tool to fix this.)

Stage C

5. Now use the rotate tool - or Properties rotate field - to rotate the long rectangle to 315 degrees. Then align it to the left and top of the previously merged shape. (You'll notice that the alignment is with the rectangle's bounding box and not its actual shape but this doesn't matter for what we're doing.)

6. Select both shapes and merge them the same way as in step 4 above.

Finishing Up

You now have your basic rounded arrow shape. You can rotate it to the direction you need and use different fills and line colours/widths to create different effects and arrows. For my example I've rotated it by 45 degrees and used a thick blue outline with a free radial fill between two lighter blues.

And that's all there is to it. Why not keep one of these arrows in your scrapbook for use in any project that might need one?

And don't forget to experiment.

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