Selecting one object
When no command is running, the cursor is your selection tool.
Click an object = it is selected. Click another = it joins the selection.
Click empty space = everything is deselected.
Selecting a whole connected run at once
Double-click a line or an arc and every line joined to it end to end is selected together.
- A rectangle is made of four lines, so this takes all four in one go.
- Long runs such as grid lines or walls come away in a single grab.
- Where the run branches, the branches come too. The history at the bottom left always says how many were selected, so if it took too many, press Esc and choose again.
- This also adds to the selection, so whatever you had selected before is not lost.
Selecting with a window
Drag with the left button from empty space to stretch a frame.
- Left to right = a solid blue frame. Only objects entirely inside it are selected.
- Right to left = a dashed green frame. Objects merely touched by it are selected too.
This is the same convention as most CAD programs. Window selection adds to the selection, so you can gather things in several passes.
Overlapping objects
Where objects lie on top of each other, press Tab to cycle through the candidates.
Grips
Select an object and small squares — grips — appear at the ends and at the midpoint of the line.
- Grab an end □ = stretch or shorten that end. Click where it should reach; or point the cursor the way you want it to go and type a number + Enter for that distance. Turn Ortho on (F8) to stretch at right angles.
- Grab the midpoint □ = move the whole line.
- Esc = cancel (the line does not move a hair).
A line stretches without your typing a single command — a habit inherited from the original.
Grips on a polyline (rectangles and polygons)
You tell them apart by shape. Look at a grip and you know what it can do.
- □ (square) = a vertex. Grab it and that one point moves.
- ▭ (rectangle) = the midpoint of an edge. Grab it and the whole edge moves parallel to itself (both end vertices move together — the edge keeps its direction).
They are shaped differently from the □ on a line because they do different things.
- Click where it should reach, or type a number + Enter — both work exactly as they do on a line.
- A rounded edge (an arc) gets no midpoint grip. The middle of an arc is not the middle of its chord, and a marker placed there would be telling you a lie.
- A polyline with a great many vertices gets no grips at all (the screen would fill with squares and become harder to grab, not easier). Touch one and a note says つまみは出していません — “grips are not shown”.
Right-click = the place to remember things
“Now, what was that command called?” — right-click.
You can get there without remembering any shortcut.
- With objects selected, right-click and you get the jobs for those objects: Cut, Copy, Paste / Move, Copy, Rotate, Mirror, Erase / Move to current layer, Make this layer current, Set to ByLayer / Text height…, Edit text, Apparent intersection / Make block, Properties.
- With nothing selected, right-click and you get the jobs for the whole drawing: Paste, Paste to original coordinates / Select all, Undo / Alias board (opens the list of shortcuts).
- The characters at the right end of each row are the quickest way to call that row: the shortcut where there is one (⌘C and so on), otherwise the Command Line word (M, CO). ⚠️ Change a shortcut on the Alias board and these characters change with it.
- Right-click in the middle of drawing or placing = cancel / finish. (Ending a run of copies, taking back one hatch point, and so on.)
Copy and paste
- ①Select the objects and press ⌘C (copy) or ⌘X (cut).
- ②Press ⌘V (paste) and the bundle follows your cursor.
- ③Click where you want it = it is placed there. You can go on placing as many as you like. Finish with a right-click or Enter.
- ⌘⇧V = place it back at exactly the coordinates it was copied from. ⚠️ It cannot be used within the same drawing (it would only land exactly on top of the original), and it is dimmed in the menu. It is the tool for carrying something to another tab at the same coordinates. If you do want a copy stacked in the same place, use ⌘V and click the same point.
- You can paste into another tab. Layers that do not exist there travel with their colour and linetype (and the block definitions travel too).
- You can also call these from the Command Line: COPYCLIP, CUTCLIP, PASTECLIP, PASTEORIG, SELALL (the same names as the original).
Hover (just touching)
Bring the cursor near an object and a note tells you what it is.
You can find out what something is before you press anything.
Changing the colour of the crosshairs
The crosshairs are the lines you look at longest on this screen.
Which colour is easiest to see differs from person to person. You can change it.
Settings on the tool shelf → Appearance → Crosshair colour.
Each press moves to the next colour (teal, white, yellow, yellow-green, orange, pink, sky).
The panel floats and does not hide your drawing — so you can compare while watching the crosshairs themselves.
※ If none of the seven suits you, write a line such as 十字の色 #FF00AA in the settings store (below) and it becomes that colour. The settings store is a plain text file that remembers what you chose in the Settings panel. You can open it in a text editor, correct it by hand, and hand the whole file to somebody else.
Changing the size and weight of the crosshairs
Two more rows in the same Settings → Appearance.
- Crosshair size = a percentage. 100 fills the screen (this is how it starts). Make it smaller and the arms get shorter. On a crowded drawing, where you cannot tell which lines are your own crosshairs, smaller is easier. (The same measure as CURSORSIZE — the same numbers work.)
- Crosshair weight = pixels. 1 is the starting thinness. 2 makes them distinct. When you want them easier to see, weight helps more than length.
Press either one and the field becomes ready on the spot. Type a number and press Enter to accept, Esc to cancel (every number in the Settings panel works this way).