How to add rounded corners to any shape in Inkscape


 

Heads-up! Directly inserting svg files in Keynote is now possible, albeit limited editing possibilities. 

One of the things I struggled for years was to create rounded corners in shapes, until yesterday when I, thanks to Nick Sapurito's Inkscape Master Class,  learned about the Live Path Effect (LPE) called Corners. I have known about LPE for years, but always ignored until two months ago, when I had to bend text. Anyhow…

Quick tutorial

This is my starting point, an arrow with sharp edges:

0. Select the shape you want to apply the arounded corners.

1. Open the Live Path Effects dialog  by going to the Path Menu > Path Effects …

Don't ask me why people write and talked about Live Path Effects, but in inkspace is simply called Path Effects. Also note it has a direct shortcut.

2. This is inconvential, but I searched for the effect instead of directly clicking on it, just to keep you  focused:

3. As the next figure shows, this effect allows to add (or not) a corner to every edge, that's the little green circle call it a handle:

Note two things, that little green circle only appears when 1 the path has the corners effect applied to it, and 2 if the Node Tool is selected.

4. Now pull the handle down to rounded the select corner:

We're almost done! The Path object is no longer a simple Path object, if you look at the bottom of the window you'll see it has the live effect applied to it.


This is because LPEs are not destructive, that is you can always go back to the original Path.

5. If for some reason you want to bake the LPE into the Path, go to the Path Menu >  Object to Path.

Wait! But there is more…

For often than not, you want to rounded all edges of a path:

In this case you simple set the radius to a non-negative number, in my case 10px. Note how using a percentage is also possible. And especially note the buttons Fillet and Chamfer. A Fillet yields a rounded corner:

Whereas a Chamfer yields a straight line:


In case you might be wondering when you would use a corner like this, here is an example:



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