Trouble In Inkscape Paradise...Don't See Rectangle I'm draw

[sfandm]

OK, I watched a tutorial for making an aperture card using Inkscape. I wrote every step down, and started Inkscape. The first step is to make a rectangle, which I tried to do, it gives me a dotted line around my rectangle, with no arrows, just two very small squares in two corners and a small circle on another corner. I then tried to move it and the whole thing disappeared. I think I may have changed one of the settings I need in the program. I just got this a week ago and would really like the help in solving this problem. Please and thanks,

Sonya in Texas

BTW- The tut is found on dan99.blogspot.com under "Making an Aperture Name Card in Inkscape"

[GrammyKrausse]

did you do object to path?
Grammy

[HeatherM]

It sounds like you have no fill and no stroke. Use Control A to select all, then click on any of the colors at the bottom of the window. That will give you a fill color.

[sfandm]

OK, I tried bith of these ideas. The first one, did not do anything but take away the small squares and circle I talked about in my original post, and when I tried to choose a different coilor from below after selecting ctrl and a, nothing changed. I have changed some type of setting and don't exactly know what I did.

Still need help. Any other suggestions???

Thanks again.

[HeatherM]

The other thing that I can think of to try is to do the Control A, then press 4 on your keyboard. Does this give you a box bounded by the double arrows? If it does, then try selecting a new fill color again.

[susibi]

go to the top tool bar in Inkscape - click on the brush icon ( next to the T text icon); this opens the fill, line properties window . Your line settings should be showing as a solid colour and your fill with no colour ( the X). This should get rid of all the problems as selecting a fill colour isn't any good if you are working in outline mode - you need to have a solid outline.
HTH
Susibi

[firstcut]

In Dan's videos when you see "(outline)" after the document name at the top of the screen he is in outline mode. You can toggle to this and back to normal by pressing the control key and the number 5 on your numeric keypad.
Start over and draw a new rectangle. Before clicking anywhere else shift click on the black (or other color) swatch at the bottom of the screen and your rectangle should show up in normal mode with a black outline or "stroke". (In outline mode it doesn't matter what the stroke is set to.) This will change the default for this document so you can follow Dan's video without the disappearing rectangle.