Tools reference

Note

If you want to edit the options of an existing object of any type, use the select tool to select it and the options panel to modify its options. The Draw, Bézier and Point tools create new objects, they don't modify them.

Select

This is the general selection tool. Click on any object on the active scrap to select it. When you select an object, the object settings panel will appear. You can select multiple objects by clicking and dragging, or by clicking multiple objects with ⇧Shift held down.

You can also move, scale and rotate selections. This can can be done with one or multiple objects. While scaling, you can hold down ⇧Shift to maintain ratio of dimensions, and hold down ⎇Alt to move the scale pivot to the middle of the object.

Point objects cannot be scaled, but they have an orientation control and can be moved. If your mulitple selection includes points, scaling will be disabled.

Important

The Select tool is also used to create areas. Select an existing line, which will be used as the bounds for the area, and use the Convert line to area action under Areas in the context menu. You can also convert the area back to a line.

Detail select

To modify the shape of lines, you need to use the detail select tool. Select any line and its segments will become visible. Select any segment with a left click. If it has handles, the handles will become visible. If it's a corner (the line going through doesn't curve), it doesn't have handles, so no handles are visible.

This image shows a curve and a corner, only one has visible handles.

To "smooth" segments (i.e. add handles) select the segment, and use the Toggle handles button in the toolbar or Segment > Toggle handles in the context menu. You can also split the path at the selected segment, or remove the segment while keeping the connection between its neighbours (shortcut ⌦Del). To move only one of the handles, hold down ⎇Alt while moving it with the left mouse button.

Draw

This tool allows you to draw lines freehand. In addition to the options of the line which you will be drawing, the options panel also has a Tool options section specific to this tool:

• Point distance: This acts as the resolution of your line, the lower the number, the more accurately it will follow the path you traced. This is because it will be made up of more segments (line points).
• Draw parallel lines: Can be used to draw multiple lines at once, where the distance between them is preserved even when curving.
• Close path: When set to "Near start", the line will automatically be closed if the end point is close to the start point. If set to "Always", the line will always be closed when you finish drawing it.
• Smooth path, Simplify path: When enabled, these run the Smooth and Simplify actions on the line after you have finished drawing it.

Note

It's generally a bad idea to have a line with many segments, so the Simplify option is recommended, but after you have finished drawing, you can select the line with the Select tool, and use the Simplify action from the toolbar or context menu to reduce the number of segments while keeping the shape.

Bézier

This is the conventional line drawing tool used in most vector editor programs. You can set the options of the line you will be drawing on the option panel.

Continue line

To continue an existing line, select it, then with the Bézier tool click one of the ends of a line and start drawing its continuation.

Close line

Click the start of your line while still drawing to automatically close the line.

Point

To create points, click anywhere with this tool. Some options are available on the option panel for the point which will be created.

For station points, the station's name setting will be can be given under the name Station reference. If this contains a @ character, the number before it will automatically increase when you create a new station point.

Inspect

This tool provides similar functionality as XTherion's status bar, when you move the cursor over something, a tooltip will tell you what you're hovering over, or the coordinates otherwise.

This is the only tool which ignores scrap boundaries, so you can inspect objects on any scrap, excluding hidden scraps.