Selecting shapes

You may need to select one or more shapes on your drawing page so that you can modify them, move them or copy them.

Selecting a single shape

To select a single shape, simply click in the middle of it once. You will see a green box appear around the outside of it.

Selecting multiple shapes

To select more than one shape, click on one then hold down the Ctrl key whilst clicking on all the other required shapes.

When you select more than one shape you will notice that a box appears around both shapes and that the individual shapes also have a pink border around them. One will have a thick pink border (this is known as the primary shape), the other(s) will have a thin pink border. The importance of the primary shape becomes clear when using the alignment tool (not discussed in this article).

Selecting a group of shapes

You can select all shapes on the drawing page at once using the shortcut key, Ctrl + A. To select several shapes which are adjacent to each other, you can drag a box with your mouse around the outside of the them. This will select every shape inside that box. Ensure that you select the entire shape within the box.

Moving shapes

To move a shape, you can drag it around the drawing page using your mouse, but this doesn’t always get it exactly where you want it!

If you need to be more precise about the position of a shape, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge it in any direction on the drawing page. If you zoom in to 400% on the page and the ruler and gridline divisions are set to fine (Tools > Ruler and Grid), then you can move a shape 0.067mm at a time using the arrow keys!

You can also use the Size and Position window (View > Size & Position Window) to specify the X and Y coordinates on the page.