3.1.1 Creating graphic objects – overview

In the toolbars on the left of the View, you can see many icons. Some of them enable you to create new graphic objects. The icons are grouped in several categories; by clicking the category icon on the left toolbar, the icons of that category are expanded into the right toolbar.

These icons are:

• Points and decorations
  • a point
  • adecoration point
  • an arrow
  • an intersection of two curves
  • an n-gon defined by the number of apices, center and one apex
• Bézier curves
  • a segment
  • a quadratic rational Bézier curve
  • a cubic rational Bézier curve
• Circles and circular arcs
  • a circular arc defined by three points
  • a circular arc defined by the center point and radius
  • a circle defined by three points
  • a circle defined by the center point and a point
  • a circle defined by the center point and radius
• Ellipses, elliptic arcs
  • the smallest ellipse defined by three points
  • an ellipse defined by three points, rotation, eccentricity
  • an ellipse defined by two foci and a point
  • an ellipse defined by the center point, a point, eccentricity
  • an ellipse defined by the center point and radii
  • an elliptic arc defined by the center point and radii
• Texts
  • a TeX text
  • a text

Choose an icon in the right toolbar and click it. Now you are ready to create your first graphic object. Each object is determined by a certain number of points, for example, a segment is determined by two points: its start point and end point. Read GO Creating Modes for further details. Once you have clicked the appropriate icon, you must specify the points to determine the desired position of the object. This is done by clicking the drawing area with the left mouse button.

When choosing the points, you can see the object being created and getting its shape according to the chosen points and the current position of the mouse cursor. In the status bar of the View, there are hints that remind you what point is to be chosen at the time. Once all points are chosen, the object is finished and you can either switch to another object type by clicking some other icon, or you can start creating an object of the same type immediately.

When choosing the points, you may want to return one step back. That can be done by pressing BackSpace – your last click gets forgotten and you can continue as if it had never been done. By pressing BackSpace several times, you can return several steps back up to the beginning of the currently created object. Or, by pressing Esc you cancel the creation and delete the object at once.

When you create graphic objects, you can see small green and blue triangles emerge in the positions where you clicked. These are not part of your image, they just mark the significant points. Their meaning is described in more detail in Anchors and hangers.

Note: Some objects available need to be determined by data different from a point position. For example, when creating an n-gon, you are asked for the number of its apices. When creating a text object, an editor opens for you to specify the source text of the object (see The Text Editor).