DesignSpark Mechanical Online Help
Inserting an image
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You can insert an image into your design or onto a drawing sheet. Inserted images and their transparency colors, aspect ratio, and placement information are saved with the design.

After you insert an image, you can select the image to display control handles for image editing. The control handles highlight when moused over and selected. If Show cursor arrows is selected in DesignSpark Mechanical Popular Options, arrows also appear next to your cursor that indicate the directions in which you can move your mouse to manipulate the image.

When placing the image, all the normal orientation shortcuts work, as well as Ctrl+Alt dragging the middle mouse button to scale/zoom the image itself. This keyboard shortcut provides an way to quickly scale the image to the size of the face.

When you insert an image with the File tool and wrap it onto a face with the Place Wrapped Image tool guide:

To insert an image

  1. Select File from the Insert ribbon group.

  2. Select the BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, or TIF image file you want to insert and click Open.

    You can select Image files from the Files of type drop-down menu to filter the files list.

  3. (Optional) Zoom the image in or out by Ctrl+Alt+dragging with the middle mouse button.

  4. Mouse over the design to align the image with the highlighted object.

    To place an image on a curved face, select the Place Wrapped Image tool guide if you want the image to flow over the curved face. Otherwise, the image will be placed tangent to the curved face. You may also use this tool guide to place a wrapped image on a planar face. The edges of the image are clipped to accommodate the size and shape of the planar face.

  5. Click on the face that defines the plane on which you want to insert the image. You can place an image on a datum plane.

    The image appears in the Structure tree. The image’s name is based on the file name from which the image was created. Removing or altering the image in DesignSpark Mechanical does not affect the original file.

To resize an image

Select the image and drag the blue control handles.

Hold the strong>Shift key to maintain the aspect ratio while resizing. Hold the Alt key to scale the image around the center handle.

You can right-click the image and select Properties to lock the aspect ratio in the Keep aspect ratio property in the Properties panel.

To rotate an image

Drag the green control handle at the top of the image to rotate the image.

You can also drag the red control handle which is not connected to the image edge to change the center of rotation.

To rotate a wrapped image

With a planar image, there is a green rotation control handle located outside the top of the image. This does not exist with a wrapped image.

Hover over one of the blue control handles at the edges of the image and query select to change it to a green control handle. You can then select the green control handle and rotate the image about the red control handle.

To flip an image

Drag handle across the other side of the image to flip the image.

To move a planar image with the Move tool

  1. Click the Move tool.

  2. Select the image.

    You can Ctrl+click to select the image along with other objects.

  3. Use the Move handle to move the line or point.

To move a planar or wrapped image with the Select tool

  1. Click the Select tool.

  2. Select the image.

    You can Ctrl+click to select the image along with other objects or to select multiple images.

  3. Use the mouse to drag to move the image(s).

To replace an image

  1. Right-click the image.

  2. Select Replace image.

To copy an image

  1. Select the image.

  2. Press Ctrl and drag the image to create a copy of the image.

    To copy and paste an image, see Cutting, copying, and pasting.

To set the transparency of the image

Enter a value or move the slider in the Transparency property.

To set a color in the image to be transparent

  1. Click in the Advanced property to display the Image Preview window.

  2. Mouse over the pixels in the image to display their RGB values.

  3. Click the eyedropper and select a pixel in the image that is the color you want to become transparent.

    You can use the zoom slider to resize the image and you can drag to pan the image within the window.

    The color you selected appears in the drop-down next to the eyedropper icon. You can add multiple transparent colors by repeating this process, and remove colors by clicking Delete Selected Color or Delete All Colors icons. The image window previews the image with the transparency you selected.

To lock an image

Set the Lock property to Location, Size, or Location and Size .

The image cannot be edited while it is locked depending on the option set. Set Lock property to No to unlock.

Tool guides

The following tool guides help step you through the process:

Place Planar Image positions the image on a plane or planar face.

Place Wrapped Image wraps an image onto a non-planar surface or face. Images are clipped to accommodate the size and shape of the face the image is being placed on.

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