Shapes such as lines, rectangles and circles are created using the shape tools. By default the shape toolbar appears alongside the right-hand edge of the Designer window, but you can drag it to wherever you prefer. There are a number of tools here for your use, and each one makes the window editing workspace act differently when active.
Shape tools allow you to create various shapes as well as edit them after they are created. Click on the tool's icon to make it the active tool. You can also double-click on a shape to change to that shape's native tool. When a shape tool is active, a toolbar will appear that has specific actions and settings for that tool.
After a shape is created, you can change its fill color, stroke color, and stroke style. See Fill and Stroke for more. All shapes can be treated as paths and be used with composite geometry functions to alter or create other shapes. See Geometry and Paths for more.
Selection Tool
Normally the selection tool (
) is active. When this tool is active, you can select shapes and components. Selected components can be moved, resized, and rotated. For more on using the selection tool to manipulate components and shapes, see Manipulating Components.
Rectangle Tool
The rectangle tool (
) creates and edits rectangle shapes. To create a rectangle, select the tool and drag inside a window to create a new rectangle. Hold down ctrl to make it a perfect square. Once a rectangle is created, you can use the square handles to change the rectangle's height and width. This is important because it is the only way to resize a rotated rectangle and let it remain a rectangle. If you resize a non-orthogonally rotated rectangle using the selection tool, it will skew and become a parallelogram, but if you double-click on it so that the rectangle tool is active, you can change the rectangle's width and height using the tool-specific handles.
There are also small circle handles that allow you to alter the rectangle's corner rounding radius. Simply drag the circle down the side of the selected rectangle to make it a rounded rectangle. Hold down control to drag each rounding handle independently if you want non-symmetric corner rounding. You can use the Make Straight button in the rectangle tool's toolbar (
) to return a rounded rectangle to be a standard, straight-corner rectangle.
Ellipse Tool
The ellipse tool (
) creates and edits circles and ellipses. It is used in much the same way as the rectangle tool. While it is the active tool, you can drag inside a window to create a new ellipse. Hold down ctrl to make it a perfect circle. When an ellipse is selected, use the width and height handles to alter the shape.
Polygon / Star Tool
The polygon tool (
) is used to create polygons and stars. Use the toolbar that becomes visible when this tool is active to alter the settings of the shape that is created when you drag to create a polygon. This tool can be used to make any polygon with 3 corners (a triangle) or more. Once created, you can use the center square handle to move the polygon around, and the diamond handles to alter the size and angle of the polygon. Hold down ctrl to keep the polygon's rotation an even multiple of 15°.
Arrow Tool
The arrow tool (
) is used to create single or double-sided arrow shapes. When it is active, simply drag to create a new arrow. Use the checkbox on the toolbar to choose a single or double-sided arrow. To alter the arrow, use the diamond handles to change the two ends of the arrow, and the circle handles to change the size of the shaft and the head. When changing the arrow's direction, you may hold down ctrl to snap the arrow to 15° increments.
Pencil Tool
The pencil tool (
) is used to draw freehand lines and shapes. When this tool is selected, you can draw directly on a window by holding down the mouse button. Release the mouse button to end the path. If you stop drawing inside the small square that is placed at the shape's origin, then you will create a closed path, otherwise you'll create an open path (line).
On the pencil tool's toolbar, there are options for simplification and smoothing, as well as a toggle between creating straight line segments or curved line segments. The simplification parameter is a size in pixels that will be used to decrease the number of points used when creating the line. Points will be in general as far apart as this setting. If you find the line isn't accurate enough, decrease this setting. If you choose to create curved segments, then the segments between points will be Bézier curves instead of straight lines. The smoothing function controls how curvy these segments are allowed to get.
Line Tool
The line tool (
) can be used to draw lines, arbitrary polygons, or curved paths. Unlike all of the other tools, you don't drag to create new paths with the line tool. Instead, you click for each vertex you'd like to add to your path. To draw a straight line, simply click once where you want the line to start, and double-click where you want the line to end. To make a multi-vertex path, click for each vertex and then double click, press enter, or make a vertex inside the origin box to end the path.
As you draw the line, "locked-in" sections are drawn in green and the next segment is drawn in red. Hold down ctrl at any time to snap the next segment to 15° increments.
On the line tool's toolbar, you can choose between three modes: normal line mode, perpendicular mode, and curve mode. Perpendicular mode is just like line mode except that each segment is restricted to either horizontal or vertical. Curve mode will create a Bézier curve path by attempting to draw a smooth curve between the previous two vertices and the new vertex.
Path Tool
All shapes and paths can be edited directly by using the path tool. This tool lets you directly modify the nodes in the path, adding new nodes, removing nodes, and toggling segments between straight or curved. Learn more about paths in the Geometry and Paths section.
Gradient Tool
The gradient tool is used to affect the orientation and extent of any gradient paints. Learn more about gradients in the Fill and Stroke section.
Eyedropper Tool
The eyedropper tool is used to set the selected shape(s) and/or component(s) foreground/background or stroke/fill colors by pulling the colors from somewhere else in the window. When this tool is active, left-click to set the selection's fill or background, and right-click to set the selection's stroke or foreground. Note that this tool works on most components as well as shapes. For example, right-clicking will set the font color on a Button, or left-clicking will set the background color.