Altium Checkerboard Pattern

[Macedonio Heninger]

Thecheckerboard pattern represents transparency, which can be any colour depending on where the image is displayed. Why would you want it to be a solid colour? Just add a layer underneath and use the Paint Bucket with the colour you desire, which is a much more straightforward solution.

We just do not want the checker board visible at times, we would find it extremely useful to toggle it off or replace it with one of our own design. We have needs in our work flow that would be serviced greatly by any feature that would allow us to mod the display of that default checkerboard. Whether it be off/on, solid, colored, or of a certain design.

Cor'e =), once again. This is the only way you're going to do what you're asking for. Draw up your design and press Ctrl + C, it isn't hard. I can copy and paste a background onto the bottom layer in about 0.5 seconds. I don't see any reason for your complaints.

Another layer is not what we want, we do not want it part of the file and we do not want to load it as a layer every time and move it to the bottom of some 100 layers, it might get saved in the file and sent out. Plus, since we have many sizes of multi-layer images, we'd have to fiddle with canvas resize and centering etc., or perfectly pick the BG we want, that's a problem that software should solve, not humans. That's too much extra work to do, and to keep adding a layer and taking it out every time we show the image. If it was something we could select or turn on/off etc. then we'd have what we want. A checkerboard is just arbitrary anyhow and whatever design considerations it historically comes from is not written on a stone tablet, for us it'd be useful to be able to mod that BG.

Software is solving it. Checkerboard means transparency. If you don't want transparency, then you'll want the bottom layer anyway. If the checkerboard weren't there then you'd inadvertently send out files that had transparency when you didn't want to, or that were transparent in ways you did not like. I can't accept that this would be "too much work" -- all you have to do is select the bottom-most layer you already have, duplicate it, move it down 1 slot, and then fill it with white. Then check/uncheck its visibility as necessary and just save it in the .PDN file. No matter what, you are going to have a "transparency bug hazard", whether a checkerboard is there or whether the app lies to you and just fills in with white.

Your missing the point, the checkerboard is just the way someone decided to graphically display transparency in PDN, however, we want to graphically display it another way, meaning we want to customize that checkerboard in the PDN source code or plug-in, not remove it by adding a layer. Software should remove repetitive work cycles, i'm not saying for you to do this, we could, or someone else could. But, first i wanted to ask if it was already available, since it seemed plausible to us that it was an option.

Our desired scenario is to take instant (but not by prolonged layer manipulations meaning "extra work") screenshots without the checkerboard. And what we wanted as a transparency BG would NEVER EVER be (that would be extremely forbidden) put in the work or file itself, so it's best to be in the application itself, if only the PDN WE use.

I think you're missing the point everyone has been trying to get at. Rick gave you some advice in the post before yours, and I think that's the only possible way to get what you're wanting without adding more coding. From what info you've given us, there doesn't seem to be any difference in what you're asking for and what everyone has been telling you.

You keep saying that you "have needs in your workflow" but haven't given any explanation as to what these are. You've jumped to the conclusion* that the checkerboard is what needs to be configured. Without any more information, there's no way we can provide any other recommendations or guidance. As far as we know, Paint.NET is simply not cut out for what you need to do.

I do feel we have been answered on this. You may if you will consider it a way to always display our proprietary "watermark" BG in the transparent areas for in-house work that may leave the premises, verses everyone's conventional checkerboard, call it an IP security feature.

That sounds like something which should be solved by an actual security or rights management system, e.g. Office, SharePoint, NTFS, etc. Paint.NET does not add any security features, it only relies on what Windows enforces.

You might even be better off with a simple file naming convention, e.g. *_Confidential.* ... someone has to mark all files as confidential anyway, and that would make it apparent without even having to open the image in Paint.NET. It would be easy to write a scheduled task (batch file?) that trolled your content repository for files which are not tagged correctly and to quarantine/rename them as appropriate.

Still, I'm not seeing your logic here. If the transparency was only visible in your versions of Paint.NET, wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose unless you are taking Screencaps? The transparency screen you design would only be visible on your versions of Paint.NET, and this wouldn't, at all, work as a watermark. Try explaining one more time, and if I can't help with an idea, I guess that's that.

then I would advise against trying it at home. This is a skill you have to learn over years. Basically, you have to be an experienced sculptor in working with cake materials, which are harder to use than the typical art materials like clay. Look up "cake sculpting" on YouTube to see what they are doing. Or search for Cake boss episodes, taking into account that this "reality" TV is heavily edited - they are showing you a very clean and quickened version of the process. Really, I think that 500 dollars is cheap for having your drawing sculpted. By the way, the airbrushing tool alone used for finishing the cake in the picture runs at around 200 dollars, although of course you don't strictly need it for making the cake in such a shape.

You seem to be good at drawing. If you can make a finished, colored drawing out of it instead of just a sketch, you can go to a bakery who has a foodgrade printer, and have it printed on the cake. They mainly advertise it as "your cake with your photo on it", but of course they can print a digitized drawing too.

If you don't want a picture, it is also doable as a 2d picture piped onto a flat cake. If the 500 dollars are for a sculpted cake, then having the picture piped can be much cheaper (I don't think that they would have required 500 dollars just for piping, but who knows, maybe you live in Manhattan). It would be this type of cake, but with your drawing on it:

If you have steady hands and some artistic experience, this kind of decoration is a skill that can be learned in maybe 20 hours. Take a piping bag, make icing, and practice on other surfaces first, even stretched plastic wrap. When you are good enough, attempt the drawing on a practice surface. Then you are ready to make the cake. Fondant or marzipan will look best as the background for the piping, but they are very hard to work with. If you have never done it before, use a cake frosted with buttercream as the background. If you have the time and inclination, you can learn how to make marzipan flowers and add them as 3-d elements on top of your drawing.

The Internet is full of tutorials on decorating cakes, watch YouTube videos about the more visual parts. There are good articles on making icing too, and we also have one or two older questions on that.

Stacking cakes that aren't prefectly symetrical requires determining the proper center of gravity; if you're too far off, the cake will topple. Building a central support pillar helps (which must be securely mounted to the cake board), but can't overcome something that's significantly off-center. The small base that you've shown will make things even more difficult.

You need to use a denser cake so that it will properly hold up to the weight being placed on it, this is especially important for designs such as yours where the base is smaller than the top of the cake, as the pressure will be exerted over a smaller area.

Depending on the size of the cake that you are planning, you may be better off finding metal bowls to use as molds, and baking the layers in that, rather than attempting to stack and shape them after baking. However, because of the size of the cake, you'll need to insert some sort of a heating core. Once it's baked (it will take a while), determine what angle you're going to want it at and slice the layers appropriately -- do not just flip over the cake and slice parallel to the flat top or you'll end up with a slip plane if you use jam, pudding or something that's not really viscous between the layers.

Flowers can be made from either icing or gum paste, but it takes some effort to get right; I still screw up icing flowers as I only do them at most one a year ... but they can be done in advance and saved for later. Depending on the humidity, you might need to make them days in advance so that they can be transfered to the cake. Some cake shops will sell pre-made flowers, but if it's a good time of the year, you might be even better off going to a florist and using real edible flowers.

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