Drawing Tools

Studio is a rendering tool, not a drafting package; geometry belongs in CAD. But presentation drawings always need a few things the sheet does not have: a bed outline to color, a circle around an area of interest, a rectangle behind a legend. The DRAW tab covers that.

Everything drawn here goes on the currently selected layer and takes that layer's style, so select the layer you want first, or add a new one with the + button in the scene tree.

Select

The default mode, and where Esc returns you from any other tool. See Canvas & Selection.

Path

Draws an open or closed path of straight and arc segments.

• Click to place each point.
• Alt+drag after at least two points to bend the previous segment into an arc.
• Backspace or Ctrl+Z removes the last point placed.
• Right-click finishes the path. Ending near the start point closes it into a shape, which is what you want for anything that will be filled.
• Esc abandons it.

Closed paths take fills, textures, gradients and materials. Open paths take stroke styling only.

Editing a path afterwards

Right-click a path and choose Edit Path. Vertices become draggable handles and the EDIT PATH ribbon tab appears:

• Step through segments with the arrow buttons; the label shows which segment of how many.
• Type exact start and end coordinates.
• Read the segment's length, and set an arc's bulge.
• To Arc converts a line segment; To Line straightens an arc.

While an arc is being edited its center crosshair, radius lines, tangents and PI point are drawn as aids. Dragging a vertex shared by two arcs adjusts the neighbor so the curves stay tangent. Esc leaves path-edit mode.

Rectangle

Drag a corner to corner rectangle. It is a closed shape like any other, so it fills, takes a texture, and can be edited as a path afterwards.

Circle

Drag from the center outward. Circles have their own radius handles when selected and no rotation handle. Filled circles are what plant symbols are usually built from, so they participate in the look's shadows and depth shading.

Text and Leader

Both are type-to-create: the object only exists once you commit non-empty text. See Text & Leaders.

Image, North Arrow, Scale Bar

Image inserts a raster file; see Symbols & Images. North Arrow and Scale Bar insert parametric plan objects; see North Arrow & Scale Bar.

Merging Paths

Several open paths that meet end to end can be joined into one compound object: select them all, right-click and choose Merge Paths. The merged object appears in the scene tree with its components indented beneath it, and styling applies to the parent, so a bed edge assembled from six CAD polylines becomes one thing to color.

Rules the merge enforces:

• All selections must be open paths with at least two points, not closed shapes.
• They must all belong to the same group or viewport.
• They must form a connected chain: shared endpoints, no branches.

Components can still be selected individually inside the merge. Deleting an end component trims the path; deleting a middle one asks whether to split the merge or delete the whole thing. A two-component merge that loses one component dissolves back to a standalone shape. Unmerge on the right-click menu breaks it apart again. All of it is undoable.

Grid and Snap

Turn on Grid and Snap on the VIEW tab to place points on a regular spacing, which helps with legends, north arrow placement and title-block-adjacent graphics. Grid sizes are 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 page units. Neither is drawn into the export.