Filled annotations

[sartley]

In ActivStudio1, you could fill an annotation with some colour - for example, take a beaker from the science annotations, draw a vertical line to represent the liquid surface and provided that the ends of the line met the annotation, the fill tool could be used to represent coloured liquid in the bottom of the beaker. This could then be saved as a new annotation.
In AS2 one has to create then fill a rectangle inside the beaker to get the same effect. However, if you now try to add this to the annotation library it won't let you. The only place it seems to allow a save is in Collections. A beaker with an empty rectangle can be saved, but not a full one. Why??? :confused:

[Nigel Pearce]

An empty rectangle is an annotation object. Currently, when you fill a rectangle it is automatically converted by AS2 into a shape object.

We've placed some rules on adding objects into the libray.
Only objects which are comprised entirely of annotations may be saved to the annotation library, pure shapes to shapes library, etc. The collections folders can contain objects of mixed types.

Depending upon feedback we may relax the rules in future. However, the Collections folder was always intended to be the place where you stored complex objects for themes and topics.

We are working on improving the fill tool such that when you fill an area enclosed by annotations, Studio will automatically create a shape object to fit the area.

[sartley]

Sounds good! I like the idea of being able to fill what you want to fill! This would be really useful if someone wanted to create a number object or annotations (hint, hint!!) and be able to colour/fill different parts to show a process or development and be able to save them all separately. I could see a number of uses for that in Science, Technology or Art.