MET 107 Drawing Tool (Shapes) Notes Day 3 Shapes: (Insert Tab Shapes) Example: Select on the rounded rectangle Then use the mouse to position the upper left corner and produce the size by dragging out the lower right corner. Once a shape has been drawn, modify it by double clicking on the shape itself. This will display the Drawing Tools Format tab, allowing modification to the shape. Some not so obvious methods of drawing: When drawing lines, press the Shift key while dragging and lines will be horizontal, vertical or aligned with the snap axes oriented at angle intervals of 15. 45 Pressing the Shift key while dragging Shapes has the following effects: Oval becomes a circle Rectange becomes a square Polygons become regular where all sides have equal length. Drawing Tools 2010_1.docx Page 1
Pressing the Ctrl key while dragging an object causes the initial selection to be copied. Pressing the Shift and Ctrl key at the same time while dragging causes objects to be centered and regular. Many (not all) Shapes have yellow anchors which can be dragged to change the Shape, and/or green anchors which allow rotation. Arcs can be created in any of the 4 Cartesian quadrants using the Arc Shape. Press the Shift key to make it round having a 90 degree included angle. Use the yellow anchors for including angles more or less than 90 degrees. Created Pressing the Shift key Created w/ Shift Key and dragging the Yellow Anchor Freeform Shapes (under Lines) allow users to create non-standard, closed geometric shapes which can be filled using the Shape Fill option. To create the object, click at each required corner and close the object by clicking on the first point again. Double click on the shape to access the edit shape (edit points) button. The Curve Shape can be used to create curved objects. Double-click in the last position to close the curve. The parabola shown below was created using the Curve AutoShape. The coordinates were defined (using a grid) before drawing the curve. Like the Freeform Shape, the points of a Curve can be edited. Use the escape key to stop drawing. Text Box objects are used to include text in Word drawings. These objects may not scale well when grouped with other objects. Text Box Text Box with no outline Drawing Tools 2010_1.docx Page 2
Move, Copy and Paste: Shapes can be moved by clicking on the edge of an object (cursor changes to indicate move mode) and dragging to a new location. Shapes can be copied by picking on the object, picking the Copy button from the ribbon (or using Ctrl-C) which places the object in the computer Move Mode Cursor clipboard. Select a new location and pick Paste from the ribbon (or use Ctrl-V) to place the object. Flip, Rotate, Align and Group Objects: All shapes can be flipped or rotated with the exception of Text Box shapes. The flip, rotate, align and group tools are found under the Arrange group on the Format tab. Original Flip Vertical Flip Horizontal Flip Horizontal & Vertical Original Rotate Left Rotate Right Rotate 2X Left or Right Original Free Rotate Free Rotate Free Rotate Drawing Tools 2010_1.docx Page 3
Shapes can be selected (Press Shift key while selecting multiple objects) and aligned horizontally or vertically. Original Align Left Align Center & Align Middle Shapes can be grouped so they will act together when moving, rotating or flipping. Original Shapes: To select the shapes, either use the Select tool from the Home tab, and drag a window over the objects, or hold the Shift key down while selecting multiple items before choosing the Group option from the Format tab. Grouped and Rotated: Order of (ungrouped) Shapes can also be changed using the Bring to front or Send to back options. Drawing Tools 2010_1.docx Page 4
Formatting Drawing Objects: Standard formats can to applied to any drawing object by selecting the object then picking on the Shape Outline button on the ribbon. Options under this allow changes to line Weight, style of Dashes and style of Arrows. Line Weight options: Selecting More Lines will produce the traditional Format AutoShape dialog box. Drawing Tools 2010_1.docx Page 5
Snap and Grid: How do you set the Snap? The Grid Settings displays this dialog box and the by default, the snap is only set when gridlines are displayed. To change this, click on this box. The spacing can only be specified to TWO decimal places. When the Snap objects to grid is checked, the cursor will tend to snap or jump to the intersection points of the grid. Because of rounding errors, grid settings should not be changed throughout a drawing session. Drawing Tools 2010_1.docx Page 6
Screen Captures: Often times, we want to capture something from our screen for inclusion in a document. To capture the entire screen, press the Print Scrn. Use Insert Screenshot to include any active window in the document. If use Print Scrn select a place to put the picture in your document and pick the Paste button to insert the picture into the document. The picture can be cropped using the crop tool which is found under the Format tab. To crop, select the crop tool, then click on a picture anchor and drag. Picture Anchors Note, when re-sizing screen captures, always pick on an anchor in the corner so as to properly maintain the aspect ratio. Correct: Incorrect: Drawing Tools 2010_1.docx Page 7