How do I create a tile pattern using Inkscape?

FloorRight Knowledge Base

Online Knowledgebase System

Knowledge Base Home |

Glossary |

Home > All Categories > FloorRight > Best Practices and Using FloorRight > How do I create a tile pattern using Inkscape?

How do I create a tile pattern using Inkscape?

If you want to create a tile pattern for FloorRight, we recommend a free program called Inkscape. Here are the general steps for creating a tile pattern in Inkscape.

Open Inkscape.
Choose Document Properties from the File menu.
Under the Page tab:

Set the Default and Custom Size units to “inches.”
Set the page size to the size of the final pattern (if you know what size the pattern will be), or use a large size like 36” x 36” to give yourself space to work and then reset the page size when you’re done creating your pattern.

Choose “New” to set up a grid.
Set the Grid Units to ‘inches.”
Set Spacing X and Spacing Y to “1.”
Set the major gird line to every 6 inches, to match commonly-used tile sizes.

Turn “Enable snap” on

Choose Zoom from the View menu and select Page to see the entire page.
Use the Rectangle tool to create the tiles on your page, choosing a different color for each size pattern by selecting the Rectangle and clicking on the color display at the bottom of the page.

When your drawing is complete, you need to change the width of the edges to “0.” To do this, choose Select All from the Edit menu, then choose Fill and Stroke from the Object menu. Finally, in the Stroke Paint tab, choose “No Paint” (the X) to change the edge width to zero.
You’ll make two copies of your drawing. First, choose Save from the File menu to save a copy that you can go back and edit later. Then, choose Save As from the File menu, give this copy a unique name, choose Plain SVG, and save a plain SVG version of the file.