Node editing a donut

ScottMcG

I'm interested in creating an entity that is topologically equivalent to the donut, but I want to be able to deform it. Specifically, I'd like to fractalize the inner circumference path. So far, I've been unable tweak the shape donut, whether by adding a node, editing a node, or fractalizing it. I can scale and shift it, however. I'm gathering that the donut is a type of entity upon which the former functions these functions won't act.

So, a couple of questions:

1. Is there a reference that defines the different types of drawing entities?
2. Is there a way to convert the donut to an type of entity that will allow me tweak the inner path?
3. Am I going about this in entirely the wrong way, and is there a different method to achieve what I'm looking for here?

Thanks!

Edit: I've discovered that I can achieve what I want by creating a circle, and within that circle a fractal polygon, tweaking the inner fractal polygon to my heart's content, and then combining the two with the MultiPoly tool. However, once I've combined the two, I can no longer twiddle the nodes of the inner fractal polygon. This should get me to what I need, but I'd still like to understand why some entities work with some tools while others don't.

JimP

Use multi-poly rather than circle for both outer and inner ring.

Why combine them ?

ScottMcG

I want the "donut hole" region to be cut-out/transparent for all sheets. Unless I'm very confused (which may be the case), MultiPoly does not itself create a shape, rather it combines two or more shapes to create a single shape, so I need to create the two boundary shapes with other tools, and the combine them with MultiPoly.

Joachim de Ravenbel

It's not the circle that prevents you from editing, it's the multipoly. The donnut drawn by CC3 is nothing more than two circles *multipolied* (as you can check by a LIST command). The node edit just doesn't work on multipolies.
Now if you want to edit the inner circle, you'll have to explode your multipoly, preferably alone on a work sheet, edit, re-multipoly.
If you realy want to node edit your entity make it two :
a) draw the outer circle
b) draw a diameter, break it to the radius of the inner circle.
c) split the circle where it meets the diameter (both ends).
d) draw half of the inner fractal path from F5 to F5 (endpoint).
e) line to path on the first half
f) repeat for the second half. Warning : don't forget to redraw the two lines (part of initial diameter) as they are now included in the poly.
Because there's now no hole, you have two polies and no multipoly. You can node edit.

ScottMcG

Joachim,

That perfectly answers my question as to the why and how of this. Thank you! I think for the purpose I initially had in mind (having a tear out mask for the map), creating the mask polygon, and tweaking it before multipoly-ing into the actual mask entity is a light-weight, quick way to do that.

Thanks again,

-Scott