I’m using Graffle to draw out existing (and future!) floor plans of my garage/studio, and I’m finding the process very laborious. I have captured measurements to the millimetre with a laser measure and so I am trying to draw accurately on a canvas using a millimetre scale.
The laborious part is drawing out the room shapes – I can draw things very quickly and roughly using the line tool, but I can’t seem to fine edit the geometric points of the lines. Is this possible to do? To put it in plain language, if I draw a closed square with the line tool, can I somehow use the geometry inspector to edit the location of the four individual corners?
Alternatively, is there a way to draw out a bunch of individual lines (to continue the example, draw out each side of my square, and then connect the lines such that if I change the geometry of one line (for example, the starting origin point of the left side), then the connected lines change in response (in the example, the origin point of the left side is also the origin point of the top side and so both would move.
As far as I have experienced, you cannot move line nodes via geometry inspector.
For drawing a closed square, might be easier to use the Shape tool and you can precisely adjust the height, width, and location better than using a Line.
Keeping lines connected can be a little tricky. You have adjust the correct end of a line and ensure the lines are set to connect to other lines in the Properties Inspector. An odd note: for some reason, in order to connect two lines, I have to have “Allow connections to other objects” checked, not “Allow connections from other lines.”
Anyway, there used to be red node and green node and you had to move the correct one in order for the connection to remain. Just testing out now and first line I draw maintains connection when moving the common node; adjusting the second line’s connecting node breaks the connection.
Thanks for the response @ScoutsHonor. I may have over-simplified my example by talking about a square, as there is nothing square-shaped about my floor plans that a square Shape Tool would help with!
I’ll experiment some more with the Line tool (drawing a closed shape) that I can add points to creating more detail in the room layouts.
Out of interest, do you know if there is a way to take a bunch of individual lines and join them (after careful positioning) as a single line?
Not a problem. I like questions like this that causes me to check things out, too.
Aside on measuring: the Grid is a really powerful tool. If you set up the grid’s major and minor increments (test out some of the options so you can see how they work in OG because it isn’t always what you think) you can get some finer control of measurements. I enable and disable depending on what I am doing since it’s not always the solution but it can help.
Another aside: the Line Tool can’t really do a closed shape; only the Shape or Pen Tools can do that. If you see “Convert Line to Shape” it does not really close the shape. What it does is convert the line itself to a shape so you get lines on each edge of the drawn line.
There is currently not a way to join or break lines. Those are on the future features request list. They have some interesting ideas on how that might work which I really like.
