u/LoveisBaconisLove

Hello, I am here for some help. I am not just new to Inkscape, I have never done any graphic design. Ever. What I would like to do is create empty rectangles of custom sizes that I can use to cut custom rectangles with a laser engraver. That's it, that's all I want to do. I found this tutorial, which seems great: https://youtu.be/g7Y4K6dMxE4?si=6C-C4Zv1w-NfbQlC Now, the problem I am having:

I can follow these instructions well enough, but none of the changes I make to either the Fill or Stroke are ever applied to an object I create. In the video she draws the object, changes Fill and Stroke and it's applied automatically. When I draw a shape, whatever shape it is, it remains just blank with dotted lines around it. Whatever changes I make to Fill and Stroke don't change th object, it remains empty with no border. In the video she doesn't use an "Apply Change" button, is there one somewhere that I am missing? Or some setting that auto applies changes? This feels like such a simple thing, it's maddening, does anyone have any idea what I can do to fix this?

Here's what all my shapes all look like no matter what changes I make to Fill or Stroke: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12p83OuIww_NBXi3pmIDGFQxkE_Ik5irL/view?usp=sharing