The canvas and the tools

Everything you draw lives on a canvas. This page covers choosing a tool, selecting objects, and setting up the canvas so drawing feels precise.

Tools

Pick a tool from the ribbon’s Tools group, from the Tools menu, or with a single keystroke.

Tool	What it does
Select V / ⌘1	Click to select, drag to move, drag a handle to resize, drag empty canvas for a marquee.
Shape S / ⌘2	Drag to draw a new shape. The Shapes group in the ribbon chooses which shape.
Connector C / ⌘3	Drag between two shapes to link them.
Pen P / ⌘4	Click to place points and draw a free-form path.
Text T / ⌘5	Click to place a standalone text object.
Hand H / ⌘6	Drag to pan the view without changing the selection.

Note

Single-letter shortcuts are ignored while you are editing a label, so typing “shape” into a text box does what you expect. A drawing tool reverts to Select after one use; choose the same tool a second time to lock it on for repeated drawing. The Tools menu marks the active tool with a check and adds (locked) when it is locked, and the status bar says which mode you are in. Select and Hand are always locked.

Selecting objects

• Click an object to select it; click empty canvas to deselect.
• ⌘-click adds or removes an object from the selection.
• Drag on empty canvas to marquee-select a region.
• Edit ▸ Select All (⌘A) and Deselect All (⇧⌘A).
• Right-click an object for Duplicate, the clipboard commands, style transfer, Align/Distribute, Edit Label, Delete, stacking order and Group/Ungroup.
• Right-click empty canvas for a different menu: Paste, Insert, the grid and guide toggles, Select All and Zoom to Fit.

The status bar at the bottom-left always reports what is selected.

Working inside a group

Clicking a grouped shape selects the whole group. To reach one shape inside it without dissolving the group, scope into it:

• Double-click inside a group, away from any shape or label, to step into it. Selection and editing are then limited to that group’s contents.
• Double-click outside the group to step back out one level.
• Or right-click and choose Enter Group / Exit Group.
• The canvas bar shows a breadcrumb of the groups you are inside; click any rung to jump straight back to that level.

Double-clicking a shape still edits its label, and ⌘-double-click still runs an object’s action. Grouping objects covers the whole of it.

Finding objects by name

Edit ▸ Find ▸ Find… (⌘F) opens the find bar above the canvas. Type part of a label to see a live match count, then:

• Select selects every match at once.
• ⌘G and ⇧⌘G step through matches one at a time, centring each.
• Select similar style extends the selection to every object that shares the selected object’s style: handy for recolouring a whole category at once.

Zooming and panning

Command	Shortcut
Zoom In	⌘+
Zoom Out	⌘-
Actual Size	⌘0
Zoom to Fit	⇧⌘0

You can also pinch to zoom on a trackpad, scroll to pan, and hold the Hand tool (H) to drag the view. The Navigator panel shows a thumbnail of the whole diagram with the current viewport marked.

Grid, rulers and guides

All three live in the View menu, and the grid and rulers are also in the Inspector when nothing is selected.

• Show/Hide Grid: a background grid; new and moved objects snap to it. Set the spacing with the Grid spacing slider in the Inspector.
• Show/Hide Rulers (⇧⌘R): rulers along the top and left edges, marked in the document’s unit.
• Show/Hide Guides: drag out from a ruler to create an alignment guide. Clear Guides removes them all.
• Set Ruler Origin… lets you click a point on the canvas to become (0, 0); Reset Ruler Origin puts it back to the canvas corner.

Units and scale

View ▸ Units switches the whole document between Points, Inches, Millimeters and Feet. This changes the rulers, the Inspector’s geometry fields and the export dialog. The Inspector’s Scale field sets what one canvas unit represents, so you can draw a floor plan at 1 : 50.

Canvas size

View ▸ Canvas Size chooses how the page behaves:

Mode	Behaviour
Fixed	An explicit page of the width and height you set in the Inspector. Use this when the diagram must fit a printed page.
Flexible (auto-grow)	Starts at the given size and grows as your diagram spreads past the edges.
Infinite	No page boundary at all; draw anywhere.