Inkscape 1.0 Update: How Stroke To Path Has Changed

• August 16, 2020
• Nick Saporito
• 2 comments

Earlier this year when Inkscape released version 1.0 they made a rather significant change to how one of the core path operations works, namely stroke to path. This change was significant enough that it actually broke some of my old tutorials, so I just wanted to post a quick update, along with a workaround, in case you’re following along with one of those tutorials and getting struck on the stroke-to-path part.

The following is a written instructional. I also have a video tutorial at the top of the page if you find it easier to learn from watching videos.

Stroke To Path

Let’s take a look at how the stroke to path function works in the older versions of Inkscape as well as the newer version.

Older Versions (Inkscape 0.92.5 and below)

Below you will see an example object. It’s a circle with a green fill and a red stroke.

If you navigate to Path; Stroke To Path, the red stroke will become a path of its own, and the green fill will be gone.

This is how Inkscape has handled this operation from the very beginning.

Newer Version (Inkscape 1.0 and above)

Now let’s take a look at how Inkscape 1.0 handles this operation using the same example.

If we navigate to Path; Stroke To Path, nothing visibly changes on the screen, but what happened was the red stroke became a path of its own, but Inkscape retained the green green as a separate path and grouped the both of them together.

This change effectively broke many tutorials that I’ve made in the past because I use this function quite often.

The Solution

I commonly used stroke-to-path in older tutorials to create offsets, and the way that I did it was by converting the stroke to a path, breaking it apart, then unify it back together. This sequence no longer works in newer versions of Inkscape, so we’ll be replacing it with a different sequence.

Old Sequence

Here’s the old sequence that no longer works…

1. Path; Stroke To Path
2. Path; Break Apart
3. Path; Union

New Sequence

And here the new sequence to replace it with…

1. Path; Stroke To Path
2. Object; Ungroup
3. Path; Union

So just swap out that old sequence with the new sequence if you’re following along with a tutorial where I use strokes to create offsets. Hopefully this isn’t too much of a disruption to your learning experience. If you have any questions just leave a comment below. As always, thanks for watching!

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