- A sketch is the finished product of sketching, but it may not be the final product of a drawing since it lacks the application of colors. It is the result of a rapidly executed freehand drawing. Sketches can be done with the use of lead pencils, charcoal pencils, or an ink pen, just to name a few.
- This sample file is an Adobe Stock asset you can use to practice what you learn in this tutorial. Open the Sketch file in Sketch. Select content in the Sketch document. In the Inspector on the right, click the plus (+) to the right of Make Exportable. Choose SVG from the Format menu.
A SKETCH file is a vector graphics file created by Sketch, a vector drawing program for Mac OS X. It contains one or more layers of drawn objects that may include text, shapes, symbols, or images. SKETCH files are saved in the Sketch image format that is only supported by Sketch. For example you can add the @2x suffix for double-sized images. Select the file format using the Format dropdown. Sketch's supported export formats are.png,.jpg,.tiff,.pdf,.eps and.svg. By default the Sketch export options are set to Size=1x (100% original size), no suffixes and.png format. Leave these options with default values.
Sketch documents are stored as ZIP archives containing JSON encoded data. The file format was originally introduced in Sketch 43 and allows for better third-party integration. Generate Sketch documents dynamically, read or modify them without opening them in Sketch.
The JSON files within the archive describe the document data and contain a number of binary assets such as bitmap images and document preview. To unarchive a document on the command line use unzip.
Archive the contents of a document folder with zip.
Folder structure
meta.json
Contains metadata about the document itself (a list of pages and artboards, Sketch version used to save the file, fonts used…). It's equivalent to the output you'd get from running sketchtool metadata on the file.
document.json
Contains common data for all pages of a document, like shared styles, and a link to the JSON files in the pagesfolder.
user.json
Contains user metadata for the file, like the canvas viewport & zoom level for each page, UI metadata for the app such as panel dimensions, etc. and whether the document has been uploaded to Sketch Cloud.
pages folder
Contains a JSON file per page of the document. Each file describes the contents of a page, in a format similar to what you'd get by running sketchtool dump on the file.
images folder
The images folder contains all the bitmaps that are used in the document, at their original scales (so if the user imported a 1000x1000px image and then resized it to 200x200px, the full 1000x1000px file will be stored).
previews folder
Contains a preview image of the last page edited by the user. If the page's size is less than 2048x2048 it will be stored at full size, otherwise it'll be scaled to fit a 2048x2048 square.
Custom data
To store data that is not part of the Sketch document structure a special field userInfo object can be set per document and layer.
You can also use the Sketch JavaScript API to set custom data. Please note that the values will be set for the current plugin or script identifier.
Sketch File Viewer
Related resources
- Render React components to Sketch
During development of your sketch, you may find your source becoming quite lengthy and appearing cluttered; which can make it harder to maintain and possibly debug. This may be due to poor formatting and/or indenting of code, however that is a different situation and not a part of this topic. This article is focused on separating a large code base into multiple files or commonly termed as modules or translation units. Splitting up your code provides an organisational benefit as you can group common features together and separate unique elements.
To illustrate the method, a simple single file sketch can be seen below. It contains a function and a simple class. I want to separate the sketch from the helper function and give the class its own module.
Call of duty global offensive. The first modification to the sketch is to add some new files. Before doing this, it is important you save your sketch. Without saving, the IDE will auto save a new sketch into the temporary files directory. This is very unsafe as the temporary folder could be emptied at any time, taking your sketch with it.
To open the sketch folder from within the IDE, from the menu bar access Sketch -> Show Sketch Folder. On Windows based computers, you can simply type the shortcut 'Control + K'.
This example requires four new files which will create our two modules, HelperFunctions and MyClass.
- HelperFunctions.h
- HelperFunctions.cpp
- MyClass.h
- MyClass.cpp
Each module requires both a .h header file and and a .cpp source file[2].
Once the files have been added, the IDE needs to be informed of the changes. Are wav files open source. You can do this by simply reopening your sketch. When complete, the IDE will display additional tabs for each of the new files.
To move the function outside of the sketch, we can simply copy the function into HelperFunctions.cpp, although its not the only addition we need. As the helper function uses a call to the Serial library, we must include the Arduino API.
Unlike the sketch file (.ino), the Arduino IDE will not scan and modify .cpp files[1], so we need to manually insert a prototype for the function at a suitable location. This could be at the top of your sketch file, or like this example, inside another header file. If a separate header is used, the file that uses the function must include the header.
The ifdef tags are used to prevent a multiple definition error incase the header is included in more than one locaiton. The define macro identifier can be any valid unique name. To add multiple functions you simply repeat the process of adding the definition in the .cpp file and the declaration or prototype in the header.
The process of moving a class into its own header is virtually the same as the function based method described above.
MyClass.h
MyClass.cpp
Now the sketch only has to include the files containing its required functionality. The sketch is smaller and each unique segment is located in its own file making large programs easy to navigate. Of course, smart file naming is valuable, a folder full of obscure file names is not much easier than searching a single massive sketch file. The initial and completed projects are attached if you would like to have a first hand look at the differences.
Tag Notes:
- Before sending your code to the compiler, the IDE will modify a few things aimed at making life easier for beginners to Arduino and C++ programming. I have written an FAQ covering the changes here: What does the IDE change in my sketch?
- For a description of the different file types available for use within the Arduino IDE, and how they are used, visit this FAQ: What are the different file extensions for?
Sketch File Type
Attached files: single_file.zip, multi_file.zip
How To Open Sketch File
Tags: modules, multiple