Using Fills and Patterns

You can assign fills and patterns to both lines and the interiors of objects. The fill types are

• Solid colors
• Gradient fills (gradual changes from one color to another)
• Hatch patterns
• Image (bitmap) patterns
• Object fills (with repetitions of another object)

In addition, you can

• Paste one object inside another to achieve a masking effect
• Copy all the style attributes from one object and apply them to another

Filling Open Shapes

You can fill open objects after they are drawn. If you accidentally fill objects (for example, if they are part of a group), select the objects you do not want filled and left-click the No color button or click the Remove Interior Fill button .

Using Fills with Text

Some interior fills, such as hatch fills and object fills, have both a foreground and background color. Don't confuse this type of background color with the text background color that you set on Text tab on the Object Format dialog box.

If you have applied a hatch fill or object fill to text, clicking a color in the color palette with the left mouse button alone sets the foreground interior color. To set the background interior color, point to a color, press and hold SHIFT, and click the left mouse button.