Rail sleepers using markers
This recipe will show us how to use the marker to arrange objects along the path without distorting them, by creating a set wooden sleepers commonly found in railway tracks.
How to do it...
The following steps will demonstrate the use of markers:
1. Select the Pencil tool (F6 or P) and create a wavy line around 650 px wide with Smoothing: set to 70. Make sure you don't make the curvature too steep.
2. Add more nodes by using the Add Nodes extension. Go to Extensions | Modify Path | Add Nodes..., select By max. segment length and enter 150 into the Maximum segment length (px).
3. Select the Rectangle tool (F4 or R) and create a 70x170 px vertical rectangle. Set its fill to
#aa4400
, remove stroke, and round the corners with 7 px.4. Apply the 3D wood filter to it by going to Filters | Materials | 3D wood.
5. Change the display mode to No Filters (Ctrl + 5) so the screen redraw doesn't lag when working.
6. Convert the rectangle to a marker by going to Object> Objects...