Drawing Tools

Oval and Rectangle Tools

You will easily find them on the Stage, since their buttons have the self-explanatory pictures.

Oval and rectangle (and other two –dimension shapes -which have an “area” ) in vector graphics consists of lines restricting some area and the fill inside the closed contour). When you depress the Oval button on the Tools you will see that in Properties Inspector you have an option to choose two colors – one for the line and one for the fill. Select properties of the contour line and the contrast color for the fill. Then on the Stage press and drag mouse and you will make your first Oval!

By the way you may have noticed that colors of your drawing may be selected not only from Properties Inspector but also from the Tools.

Now pay attention to the small buttons under the color choices in the Tools Panel. The first select black and white colors for the line and fill. The second allows to make “hollow” ovals – without fill – for which only contour line will be drawn. If this button (with the red diagonal) is used for the line then the Oval with the fill but without border will be drawn.

Rectangle tool is the similar to the oval. Drag and drop the cursor and you will create a rectangle of any size and color.

For the rectangle Tools panel offers an additional option. At the lower part of the Tools you will find the small button which will help you to create a rectangle with rounded corners. You may choose a corner radius (in pixels) – it will make the corners as rounded as you like.

For now you may experiment more with Arrow Tool – try to select the oval or the rectangle. It is important that when you click on the drawn shape it will highlight only the fill of it and leave the border unselected. It leads to the result you may be haven’t expected – if you click the rectangle and after that drag it to the different place you will reposition only the fill and leave the border where it was before!

However if you double click the shape it will select both fill and contour and may drag them altogether. If you place the cursor exactly on the contour line and click or double click it you may select only border line or it’s fragment. The last small button “swaps” colors. If the line was red and fill white after swapping line becomes white and fill red.

If you need to move selected shape (or anything selected) you may also use arrow keys on the keyboard. The distance you are moving the selected drawing with each key press will depends on magnification of the stage.

You may also explore the bending the contours of the shapes with the Arrow tool in the same way you were doing for the lines.

After a while you will have enough practice to freely manipulate the shape.

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