2D Design: Flood Fill

Brad Castle

15 April 2025 16:13

Flood Fill Tools

In this tutorial, we’ll explore the Flood Fill tools in Carveco Maker, which allow you to colour specific areas of your bitmap or vectors. These tools are found under the Bitmap menu.

Introduction

After importing and reducing the colours in a bitmap (e.g. to 9 colours), you can use flood fill tools to selectively colour areas. This is especially useful when building up a simulated view of the final machined result.

Accessing the Flood Fill Tools

Navigate to Bitmap > Flood Fill, where you'll see the following options:

Flood Fill
Flood Fill Selective
Flood Fill to Vectors

Flood Fill

This tool replaces any clicked colour with your currently selected Primary Colour. Simply click within the bitmap to flood-fill a region. If you make a mistake, you can undo and try again.

Flood Fill Selective

This variation of the flood fill tool colours a region only until it hits a boundary of a different colour. It’s useful for targeting specific enclosed areas without affecting neighbouring ones.

Flood Fill to Vectors

This is the most commonly used option. It applies flood fill to closed vector areas rather than bitmap pixels. It's especially useful for:

Colouring vector artwork for previewing
Creating realistic simulations of machined work

Select your vectors, choose your desired primary colour, and run Flood Fill to Vectors to apply the fill. You’ll see the result update in both the 2D and 3D views.

Colour Simulation

After applying colour fills, simulate the toolpaths in the 3D view. The filled colours overlay the simulation and provide a realistic preview of the final piece. You can update individual vector regions with different colours at any time.

Layering Order

Order matters. If you flood-fill a background area after applying colours to foreground shapes, it may overwrite those regions. Always apply background fills first, followed by foreground details.

Hints, Tips & Tricks

Use Flood Fill to Vectors for clean, editable results — ideal for simulated previews.
Fill background colours first to avoid overwriting vector details.
You can undo any flood fill action instantly using Ctrl+Z.
Switch the simulation view to Bitmap Only to see the flood fill effects without material overlays.
Depth colours and flood fills are different — flood fill affects the bitmap layer, not toolpath depth shading.

Restoring the Original View

If you want to return to the original unfilled view, simply toggle off the bitmap visibility or reset the colour fills manually. You can also disable Depth Colour display to isolate the flood fill results.

Summary

The Flood Fill tools offer a simple and powerful way to visualise and colour your design within Carveco. Whether you’re editing bitmaps or highlighting vector areas, these tools help bridge the gap between design and finished appearance.