116. Fill an Object  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 112 Place Shapes on the Drawing Area 115 Create a New Shape
 SEE ALSO 117 About Manipulating Objects
If you've placed shapes on the drawing area already, you're probably already familiar with the Line and Filling toolbar's style, width, color , and fill options. ( 111 Draw from Scratch describes the use of the Line and Filling toolbar in detail.) Instead of relying solely on the Line and Filling toolbar, you can use a more complete dialog box, called the Area dialog box, that enables you to control every aspect of a shape's fill. You can choose the colors, gradients, and hatching patterns, and you can even select graphic images to fill up the space inside your shapes. One timesaving feature of the Area dialog box is its capability to save new fill combinations that you define so that you don't have to select the same options again when you want to reuse a fill pattern on some other object. | 1. | Draw an Object to Fill Draw a shape in your drawing area that you can fill. 116. Fill an Object  | | 2. | Select Format, Area With the shape selected, select Format, Area to display the Area dialog box, or click the Area button on the Line and Filling toolbar. The first page of the dialog box, Area , basically provides the same fill tools as the Line and Filling toolbar does. You can elect to use no fill, a color fill, a gradient fill, a hatching pattern fill, or a bitmap fill (from a graphic image stored on your disk). As you select the respective Fill section options, the Area page changes to reflect the options you've selected. For example, if you click the Gradient option, the Area page offers a long list of gradient patterns you can choose from and enables you to determine how dramatically the gradient moves, in incremental pixels, from one color to another.  NOTE Until you familiarize yourself with all the gradient patterns, save any changes you make to a new pattern by clicking Add . | | 3. | Specify a Shadow
Click to select the Shadow page of the Area dialog box. Here, you can apply a shadowing effect to your selected object (including 3D text you've placed on the drawing). The Position option enables you to determine where the shadow will fall; for example, if you click the lower-right corner, the shadow will drop from the lower-right corner of your selected shape when you click OK to apply the shadow.
| | 4. | Select a Transparency, Color, or Gradient If you have elected to add a color fill to a shape, you can determine how much of the underlying objects show through the filled area. The No transparency option makes the selected object's fill overwrite anything below it. If you choose the Transparency option, you can determine, in percentage terms, how much any objects underneath the fill area show through. If you choose the Gradient option, you determine how the color or other fill transitions to full transparency. NOTE The Transparency page applies only to colors you've already filled a shape with; if you choose the Gradient option on this page you'll affect how the chosen fill transitions gradually complete the transparency. Use the Gradients page instead if you want to fill an object with a gradient pattern that transitions from one color to another. Click the Colors tab to display the Colors page of the Area dialog box. Here, you can choose a color or even generate your own color by combining RGB values . Click the Save button if you generate a color that you might want to reuse in the future. To reuse a saved color, click the Load button and select the color you wish to use. KEY TERM RGB values The red, green, and blue elements of a color. All colors are composed of different combinations of the primary colors, red, green, and blue. The numbers you enter in the three RGB values determine how much of each primary color you want to include in your colored fill. If you click the Gradients tab, you are able to specify exact attributes of the gradient you want to fill with. As mentioned earlier in this task, saving any changes you make to a gradient to a new pattern is recommended until you familiarize yourself with gradient effects. On the Gradients page, you can determine the gradient's central location, the angle of the gradient as it moves from one color to another, how much of a border the gradient will have, and the extent of the gradient's "from" and "to" colors. As with the Colors page, you can save a specialized gradient that you generate for later use by clicking the Save button. | | 5. | Select a Hatching
Click to select the Hatching page. Here, you can select from the available hatching patterns to fill your shape. In addition, you can determine the spacing between hatch marks with the Spacing option. You can specify the angle used for the hatching grid lines, the direction of the hatch rotation, and the type and color of lines to use inside the hatching pattern. You can save a specialized gradient that you generate for later use by clicking Save Hatches List . To reuse a saved hatching pattern, click the Load button and select the hatching pattern you wish to use.
| | 6. | Select a Bitmap
Click the Bitmaps tab to display the Bitmaps page of the Area dialog box. Here, you can select from several bitmapped images to fill your shape. The Bitmaps page even enables you to create your own bitmap pattern and save it for reuse by clicking Save Bitmaps List . If you select Blank instead of another bitmap pattern, the Pattern Editor activates. Click the boxes in the Pattern Editor to fill them in. As you do, the preview area updates to show you what your pattern will look like as a fill. The Foreground color option determines the color of the selected boxes (as you click to select them), and the Background color option determines the pattern's background. Be sure to save your pattern by clicking the Save button if you want to reuse the same bitmap pattern in the future.
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