🥏 Ellipse in Plane

$ man ellipse-in-plane

Draw mode (the studio way): sweep the whole ellipse onto the highlighted face, all the way round. Lifting does not end it — press again near where you stopped and the halves count as one sweep, which is what a trackpad needs. Your ink is fitted to an ellipse, then the handles appear so you can nudge it — or press R and draw it again. Handles mode skips the sweeping entirely: the centre moves the plate, the two rim dots set length + tilt, the small accent dot sets width. Same drill, same scoring — the button switches at any time.

Scored against the exact circle that face holds — its image is solved in closed form from the camera, not sketched in. Placement, tilt, size and how open the ellipse is (its degree) each count; nail them and it reads 100. The free zone is set for the hardware you are on — the HUD says which — and it never falls below a few real pixels, so a small phone sheet is not judged more harshly than a desktop one. Three faces per round, each turned further away than the last (your very first round is two, so the drill gives you a score before it gives you the hardest face), and after each lock the hint names whichever thing you missed by most.

Keys: arrows move · [ ] tilt · - = length · , . width · R start the plate over · Enter lock in, then next face, then new round. Hold shift for bigger steps.

The dashed line across the sheet is the horizon — your eye level. The dashed line through the reveal is the axle: the line straight out of the face, drawn for real and labelled on the sheet. The minor axis is the short way across an ellipse, the major the long way. An ellipse's degree is what templates are sold in — 30° means the short way across is sin 30° = half the long way.

Studio tip: the minor axis runs down the axle — on a wheel, straight out along the hub. Nail that direction before you touch the size.