| The Drawing Tools
There are eight different tools: selection, shape, polygon, line, text, the rubber stamp, zoom, and browse. Click once on a tool to use it activate it for a single use; once you've created a graphic, the selection tool will become active again. To keep using a tool indefinitely, click it twice. This isn't necessary for the rubber stamp, zoom, and browse tools — just click once to switch to the tool indefinitely. The Shape and Line tools show miniature versions of the graphics that will be drawn. The Text tool shows the actual font that will be used when creating a text box. The Polygon tool shows a sample polygon with its default style. You can change the settings for the line, shape, polygon tools by selecting one of the tools and then using the Info window to modify the settings. For example, to change the default line width, so that all lines created by the line tool will be 4 points wide, click the line tool and then change the line width in the Style pane of the Info window. To change the default font, click on the Text tool and choose the font, style and size in the Font panel. You can also use Paste Font, Paste Style, and Paste Magnets to change the settings for the drawing tools. Use the Drawing Tools Preferences pane to reset the drawing tools to their original configuration.
You can also use the keyboard to switch between the tools. Press "1" to switch to the 1st tool, "2" to switch to the 2nd tool, and so on. Even if a tool is not visible, you can still use the following keyboard shortcuts to activate a tool: v - Selection s - Shape p - polygon l - Line t - Text r - Rubber stamp z - Zoom b - Browse
Related Topics
| Selecting Drawing Shapes Drawing Lines Working With Text Drawing Polygons Zooming Table of Contents: Graphics Main Table of Contents