DrawDesktop-Tips_Tricks_ENG.txt

Draw Desktop - Tips & Tricks

1. Selecting (moving, rotating, resizing, changing color, etc.) for shapes: "angle", "dimension", "line point", "polygon", "spline".
After drawing, switch to another shape, e.g., a square, and then select (Ctrl+click).
	
2. After selecting 1 or more objects (Ctrl+click), you can move/rotate/change their color/resize them as a group.

3. When drawing, it's advisable to enable 'Snapping mode' to "S2A" - this facilitates drawing by snapping lines to other objects.

4. You can group objects together (Ctrl+G) and ungroup them (Ctrl+Shift+G).

5. After using COPY (Ctrl+C) on a selected shape, PASTE (Ctrl+V) will place the object at the mouse cursor's current position.

6. "Lasso select": Select with a polygonal line using "Line point" while holding "Ctrl".For inverse selection, enable "Invert".

7. Quickly exit "Zoom" mode - (Win+Esc).

8. If the program window obstructs your screen, minimize the program to the taskbar and use keyboard shortcuts. You can also disable "Show indicators".
  A minimized window can be restored with (Ctrl+Home).
9. To draw a RHOMBUS (diamond shape): enable "Reg. Polygon" and set 'Angles' (or number of vertices) to '4N'.

10. To draw a perfect circle: while drawing an "Ellipse", hold (Shift).

11. To draw a perfect square: while drawing a "Rectangle", hold (Shift).

12. To draw a perfectly straight line/arrow: while drawing with "Line" (or similar tools), hold (Ctrl) (this enables auxiliary angle snapping at 15-degree increments).

13. Arc pointing downwards or sideways: draw an arc, select it (Ctrl+click), and rotate it using (Ctrl+arrow keys) or (Alt+arrow keys).

14. Text curved along an arc: in the text properties, enter an angle value in the 'Curve angle' field. For text curved downwards, enter a negative value.

15. Deleting shapes: after selecting a shape, press the (Del) key, OR hold (Ctrl) and quickly double-click the left mouse button on the shape.

16. Slow movement (after selecting a shape: use arrow keys).
Fast movement: hold (Shift) while using arrow keys.
	
17. Slow rotation (after selecting a shape: Alt+arrow keys).
Fast rotation: hold (Alt+Shift+arrow keys).

18. Symmetrical resizing (enlarging/shrinking): select the shape and use the (+) and (-) keys.

19. Modifying a shape: after selecting the shape, click and drag any of its green control points.

20. Editing "angle" value: After drawing an angle, switch to another tool (e.g., "rectangle"). Select the angle's text label, copy it, and paste it elsewhere. Delete the original text. You can now edit the pasted text.
Note: The copied value will not update if the angle's arms are moved (it becomes detached from the angle shape).

21. You can draw an arc segment (a part of an arc) by changing a value like '180S' to, for example, '90S' or '45S'.

22. For the "Arrow" tool, if you enable the '2x' checkbox (or a similar option for double arrowheads), it will draw double-sided arrows.

23. "Line point" and "spline" tools have checkboxes to draw arrowheads at their ends: single arrow (1H, 1AH) or double-sided arrows (2H, 2AH).

24. The "Triangle" tool can be used to draw an equilateral triangle (by entering a specific side length value) OR a right-angled triangle.

25. To take a screenshot within the program, use (Shift+PrtSc).

26. After creating "Dimensions" (which include arrows), if you switch to another tool, you can then select (Ctrl+click) the dimension lines, arrowheads, or the dimension text individually to move or edit them.

27. After loading an image using "LoadIMG" and making any changes (or even if no changes are made), press (Esc).
(Ctrl+Home) will bring the program window to the front.

28. Before using SAVE (Ctrl+S), exit 'EDIT' mode.

29. For recording desktop animations, you can use free programs like:
ZoomIt (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/zoomit)
or ShareX (https://getsharex.com/)
(It's also recommended to download ffmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/ - often used by ShareX for video processing).