Spaces

Spaces are ways of handling paths with or without transformations.

Let's say you have a rounded, rectangular path, but the layer has been rotated. If you want to make the shape taller, it's easier to do so without that rotation. Normally, you'd have to use a precomp to do this, and go into the un-rotated precomp. But Penpal can show you the path as it really is, without the rotation.

The Spaces button to the right of the tabs shows the active space. When you hover over it, a dropdown allows you to activate a different space.

Many of Penpal's buttons behave differently depending on which Space you are in. If you move points up in Comp space, they will move in the direction that is up in the composition. If your layer was rotated, and you moved them up in Layer space, they would move upwards within the layer, along it's angle of rotation. Flipping and centering Paths, Aligning and distributing points, flattening and flipping tangents, and even snapping points to pixels… are dependent on which space you are in, if your path is inside a shape group or a layer that has been transformed.

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