Presentation of the drawing tools
Drawing tools are located in the main panel. They will set the way your main brush tool (Pen Brush, Pencil Brush, Mechanical Pen etc.) will behave when drawing. Multiple drawing tools are available: Stroke, Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, Floodfill tools...
This icon allows you to select the Stroke drawing tool. Holding a click on the icon will make a pop-up menu with more options appear. You will be able to select other related tools such as the Dot, One point Dot and Filled stroke tools. This last tool is a filling tool: its use will be explained in the ‘Filling tools’ part of the current lesson.
Clicking on this icon will turn the Line tool on.
To trace a line in your drawing space:
* Click to determine the location of your line’s first end tip
* Hold the click and move your mouse
* Drop the button to create a line
Hold [Shift] to draw a perfect straight line. This shortcut works with the Line, Dot and Stroke tools.
Holding a click on the Line's icon will let you use the Fill line tool. Since it’s a filling tool, its parameters will be explained in the ‘Filling tools’ part of the current lesson.
To draw a Rectangle, click on the center of the image and, without letting go of the mouse button, slide it towards the bottom right hand corner. Release the mouse button. A gray rectangle has now been drawn in the current project window (see the diagrams below).
Hold [Shift] to draw a square instead of a rectangle.
Click on this icon to select the Ellipse tool.
Click to set the ellipse's center on your drawing space, then hold the click until you obtain the desired ellipse. Press [Shift] if you want to obtain a perfect circle.
Holding a click on the icon above lets you choose between different ellipse and circle modes. The Circle option lets you draw a perfect circle. You can also choose to draw a 2 Pts Circle or a 3 Pts Circle. The first mode allows you to create a circle by defining its diameter. The second one creates a circle by defining its diameter and rotation angle.
2 Pts Circle
The 2 Pts Ellipse tool behaves the same way.
You can also automatically fill the ellipses or circles you’ve drawn by using the Filled variations of the aforementioned tools.
This icon will give you access to different Splines.
By default, you can draw 3 points splines, but you can also draw multiple points splines, such as Beziers splines and B-Spline splines.
HUD3 points spline
To draw a 3 pts spline in your drawing space:
* Click to determine the location of your spline’s first end tip
* Hold your click and move your mouse or stylus
* Release the button to determine the location of your spline’s second end tip
* Move again your mouse or stylus to set the curve of the spline
* Click again, once you are satisfied of your spline
When using the B-Spline or Beziers spline, hold [Shift + Suppr] to delete the last placed points.
HUDB-spline
To draw a multiple points spline in your drawing space, click several times with your mouse or stylus to build a line broken by yellow lines or punctuated with red dots.
Both of these tools are very useful, because you can modify dots or lines.
* Click on one of them and move your stylus in order to edit the spline. If you are using the Bezier spline, you can even use the tangent's handles
* You can press the [Ctrl] key to move only one handle in the tangent: this will give you more control to draw your spline
* Press the [Ctrl] key and click anywhere on your drawing space to move your spline
* You can also close the spline thanks to the option Close Spline in the pop-up menu, that will appear with a right click.
* The same pop-up menu will allow you to draw your spline from the points you set by using the Apply Spline function. You can also use the [Enter] key to do this.
* The Add to Bin option saves the current spline, in order to use it later (the software will ask you a name to save the spline).
To re-use a spline, open the pop-up menu and choose it among the different names proposed at the bottom. The pop-up menu can only appear if you have started to draw another spline.
You can also delete a spline via the Erase menu.
The aspect of circles, rectangles, splines (etc.) depends on the current brush tool you’ve selected: Mechanical Pen, Pen Brush, Air Brush... (see below). Please note that if you want to use the current brush’s parameters you’ll have to use the Fade connection option. Connection will be discussed in lesson 10.
Circles / Lines / Bezier splines (applied with different tools)