LayOut's line and shape tools make it easy to draw visual elements that give your document a polished look.
These tools can help you organize content on each page so your audience can easily follow along. For example, you might add a titleblock to convey basic information or highlight a detail in your project with a clipping mask, as shown in the following figure.
With LayOut's line and shape tools, you can
- Draw straight or curved lines and arcs.
- Draw rectangles, circles, and polygons and then split and join them to create more complex shapes.
- Bend or distort lines and shapes by editing the curvature controls and path points.
- Customize the line style, width, and more for lines or shapes.
- Fill shapes with colors and patterns.
- Create a clipping mask that shows part of a model or image inside a shape.
Tip: As you draw lines and shapes in LayOut, you'll notice the LayOut inference engine displaying helpful cues.
LayOut's inference engine is similar to, but not exactly the same as, SketchUp's. Here are a few quick tips to help you interpret the cues that you see when the LayOut inference engine is at work:
- Colors indicate a line's position in the document area or relationship to other lines. For example, you might see a green dashed line to indicate when the Line tool cursor is vertically aligned with a line or shape above or below the cursor, as shown in the following figure.
- ScreenTips identify significant points, such as the midpoint of a line.
- To tell the inference engine you're interested in a point, hover the mouse cursor over that location before you begin drawing.
- To increase the inference engine's sensitivity, zoom in on the drawing area.
- Holding down the Shift key doesn't lock on an inference as it does in SketchUp.
