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Drawing on the web

Drawing on the web is how you mark up a plan sheet or a field sketch in the Drawings view of your browser. You pick a tool, draw lines, shapes, notes and dimensions, and select marks to move, copy, group or restyle them. Marks made here show on the phone too, and the other way round.

By Trueleveler Editorial

Where do I find the drawing tools?

Open the Docs & Comms group in the left rail and choose Drawings, then open an area and a sheet in it, or open a field sketch from the Field Sketches section. New sketch makes a sketch of your own. The tools are a row of buttons above the sheet: hold the pointer over a button to see its name. With view-only access to Drawings the tool buttons are greyed out and the sheet can be looked at but not marked.

How do I select, copy, group or mirror marks?

Choose Select or Pan, then click a mark. A bar opens at the bottom of the sheet with Done, what is selected (Line, 3 selected or Group of 3), Add, Copy, Duplicate, Group or Ungroup, Flip left-right, Flip up-down, Mirror copy, Order, Paste and Delete, and on a sketch Material, Same material and, for a metal line, In / out; a button that does nothing for this selection is not shown.

Done, or Esc, or a click on empty sheet lets go. Add lets you click more marks to add them or take them out. Shift-click also adds or removes a mark, and with a mouse a drag box selects the marks inside it.

Select all is in the More actions menu, the three dots in the top bar of the viewer, and on Ctrl+A (⌘ A on a Mac). Copy is Ctrl+C, Paste is Ctrl+V, Duplicate is Ctrl+D, Group is Ctrl+G and Ungroup is Shift+Ctrl+G, and Shift+Ctrl+V pastes the block where the pointer last was. Pasted marks land a little to the right of and below the original and are selected. A pin tied to an item such as an RFI or a punch item is never copied or grouped.

Mirror copy asks for a line: click two points or drag, and the copies appear with the originals still there; the note offers Delete originals for a few seconds. Text keeps its words and stays readable, and a door swing is turned over with the sheet, so it swings the other way, and so are the other symbols that are part of the building; a north arrow, a keynote or any symbol with letters or numbers in it only changes place. A box, an oval, a cloud or a highlight can be mirrored only across a level or plumb line.

How do I put one mark in front of another?

Select the mark, or several marks or a group, then press Order in the bar at the bottom of the sheet. Four choices open: Bring to front, Bring forward, Send backward and Send to back. Bring to front puts the mark over every other mark, and Send to back puts it under every other mark, under a Fill as well. Bring forward and Send backward move it one step: over, or under, the next mark it overlaps. A choice that would change nothing is greyed and says why: Already in front, or Already at the back.

The same four choices are on the keys, with a mark selected: ] is Bring forward, [ is Send backward, Shift+] is Bring to front and Shift+[ is Send to back. Marks you move together keep their order, and each choice is one Undo step. A copy, a paste, a duplicate and a mirror copy are new marks and land on top, whatever place their original was given. Flip, Move and the corner dots never change the order, and the order is saved with the sheet, so the phone shows it too.

How do I use a finger or the Apple Pencil?

Open the More actions menu and choose how a finger and the Apple Pencil draw. Finger and Pencil both draw, palm guard on is the default: while the Pencil is touching or hovering over the sheet, and for 2 seconds after, a finger moves the sheet instead of drawing. Pencil only draws holds a finger back for the whole session once the Pencil has touched the sheet, and Finger always draws holds nothing back.

With a finger or the Pencil, the first touch on a mark only selects it; a drag from a mark you have not selected, or from empty sheet, moves the sheet. A press has to go past 8 pixels before a selected mark moves.

How do I draw a free-form line?

Choose the Free-form line button in the toolbar and trace the line. If you lift without holding, the trace keeps its shape and a Straighten button shows for two seconds: press it to turn the trace into straight segments with a corner where you turned, and press Revert to get the trace back. If you hold still at the end instead, the trace straightens by itself, and moving on undoes it. The line never closes and takes no fill or hatch.

A selected free-form line has a dot on each corner and each end, and dragging a dot moves that corner only; a long trace that was not straightened has dots on its two ends only. It takes a material, and Dim on shows a length for each segment.

How do I draw a line from point to point?

Choose the Point-to-point line button, click each corner in turn, then press Done, press Enter, or click the last corner a second time. A dashed band shows the next segment with its length and angle. Undo point takes back the last corner, and Esc, or any other tool, throws an unfinished line away. A line holds at most 200 corners.

A corner snaps like the end of a Line, to End, Mid, Center, Cross, Near, 90° from another line or the grid, and then Level and Angle 15 turn the segment; hold Shift to force the 15 degree step, or hold Alt or ⌘ to draw free. The line is saved as one free-form line.

How do I write a note with several lines and set its width?

Choose the Text tool and click the sheet. A box opens where Return starts a new line, and the Add note button, or Ctrl+Return (⌘ Return on a Mac), adds the note. Esc, Cancel and a click outside the box drop it. A note holds up to 2,000 characters. The Callout tool and Edit text open the same box.

Select the note and a pill appears in the middle of its left edge and of its right edge. Drag the right pill to set the width, or the left pill to move the left edge and set the width; the words re-flow while you drag and one Undo takes it back. With the Text tool, a drag draws a box of the width you drag. A note is never narrower than about 3 text heights or its longest word, and a callout's note has the right pill only.

How do I make text bigger?

Choose the Text tool, or select a note, and press the Text size button in the toolbar, the one that shows Aa and a number. Its list has the common sizes 1 to 6 in halves, each with its word S, M, L, XL, 2XL or 3XL, and below them a group called Bigger sizes with 7 to 20 and the words 4XL up to 17XL. Pick one and it restyles the selected note and sets the size of the next one.

A note with a width of its own keeps its line breaks when you change its size, because its width grows with the text. From 4XL up, a long note placed with a click wraps at the edge of the sheet instead of running off it. A selected note has a dot on each corner: drag one to make the text and the width bigger or smaller together (the corner on the other side stays where it is), or pick a size in the list.

How do I move a dimension?

Select the mark the dimension belongs to; with Dim on under it, its chips show, and they get a thin dashed outline while the mark is selected. Chips are placed to keep clear of each other and of lines. Drag a chip where you want it: it stays there, the other chips keep clear of it, and a thin line joins it to its mark when it sits far away. One Undo puts it back.

Two quick clicks or taps on a moved chip put it back, and Reset dimension places, the pill that shows once a chip has been moved, puts back every moved chip of that mark. Only the chips of a selected mark can be dragged: a click on the chip of another mark selects that mark. Copy, Paste, Duplicate and moving a group keep a moved chip with its mark, and a Flip or Mirror copy turns its place over with the mark.

How do I show angles or a radius?

Select the mark and use the pills under it beside Dim on. Angles on shows the angle at each corner of a free-form line or shape and where a line meets the end of another line; it needs no scale. Radius on, for an oval, shows R for a circle and Rx and Ry for any other oval. A free-form line with Dim on shows a length for each of its segments. Dim and Radius need the sheet's scale, and a plan sheet has none until you set it: click Quantity takeoff, then Scale, then the two ends of a length you know, and type its length. A field sketch has its scale from the moment it is made. Without a scale they still switch on, and a line under the buttons of the bar at the bottom of the sheet says what is needed and offers Set scale; the lengths show as soon as the sheet has a scale.

How do I give a mark a material?

On a field sketch, select the marks and press Material, the chip in the toolbar or the button in the bar at the bottom, then pick a metal or a membrane from the list. With nothing selected and a tool that draws an outline armed, the pick is used for the next marks you draw. The list starts with None, then Galvanized steel, Aluminum sheet and Stainless steel 304, then the membranes, each row showing its real thickness and its typical inside bend radius where it has them.

A material goes on a line, an arrow, a pen stroke, a free-form line or shape, a box, an oval and a cloud, but not on text, a callout, a pin, a symbol, a highlight or a fill. While a material is set, the Line weight and Line type buttons hide because the material sets them. Same material, in the bar, selects every mark on the sheet that has the same one. A plan sheet has no materials.

A metal's bends are drawn rounded, and so is a corner where two lines of the same metal, colour and line type meet end to end; a membrane keeps sharp corners. Thin metal is drawn heavier than true size, and a note at the bottom left of the sheet says so.

What is In / out?

In / out says which face of a bent metal a length is measured to. Bent metal has two lengths, because the inside of a bend is shorter than the outside by the thickness: an angle that measures 2 inches by 3 inches on the outside, bent from metal 1/16 inch thick, measures 1 15/16 inches by 2 15/16 inches on the inside.

On a field sketch, every length chip of a line, an arrow or a free-form line drawn from galvanized steel, aluminum or stainless steel starts with a word, out or in, so you can see which length you are reading; Both is one chip of two lines, outside over inside. By default the line you draw is the outside face and the chips measure to the outside. A label you type with Set label still shows your words, with out or in in front of them.

To change that, select the line and press the In / out pill under it, the last one in the row with Dim on, Angles on and Radius on, or press the In / out button in the selection bar, which works for several marks at once. A sheet called Inside and outside opens beside the button, with three things:

While a metal line is selected, a band of short ticks runs along the side the metal is on. Flip metal side moves it to the other side, a line drawn as the inside face has its ticks on the other side of the angle, and a line drawn as the middle has ticks on both sides. The ticks show on the screen only: a saved picture, a PDF or a print carries the chips and their words, but not the ticks.

Each choice applies at once to every metal line in the selection, as one Undo step, and a choice that is already lit makes no step. The sheet closes with Esc, with its X, or when you press anywhere else, and it closes when the marks it is for are no longer selected.

Lengths are to the corner where the faces meet, the way a shop reads them, not to where the bend starts. A membrane is not bent in a brake, so it has no inside or outside, and a box, an oval or a cloud shows an area, so none of them gets the words; a plain line keeps its plain length. A plan sheet has no materials, so it has no In / out.

What is different from the phone?

The marks are the same marks, so a sketch or a plan sheet marked up in one place shows them in the other. A few things differ. The web has no Tools sheet: the tool buttons show their names when you hold the pointer over them. The In / out sheet opens beside its button, where the phone's comes up from the bottom. A web note's size changes with its corner dots or in the Text size list, and a click outside the note box drops the note where a tap outside keeps it on the phone.

The phone's rule that a press of 8 points or less draws nothing is the phone's own. On the web a line or a box smaller than 6 pixels is not saved, and a freehand stroke needs at least two points. Sketching in the field describes the phone.