Editing & selection
The tools, how selection and manipulation work, the edit panels and action palettes, undo/redo, handedness and help mode.
Every tap and drag on the canvas means something different depending on the active tool. This page explains the tools, how you select and manipulate elements, and the editing model underneath (undo, edit panels, handedness).
The tools
The tool palette runs down one side of the canvas: a Pointer at the top, then the drawing tools. On Mac and full-screen iPad it’s always visible with labels; on iPhone you tap to fan it open. The first nine tools have a number-key shortcut on Mac and iPad keyboards (⌘1–⌘9); the Opening, Annotation and Measurement tools are picked from the rail.
| Tool | What a tap / drag does |
|---|---|
| Pointer | The default. Drag pans, pinch zooms, a tap selects nothing. The full document menu (Save · Export · Import · Visible layers · Background · Properties · Drawing health · Settings) fans out beneath Undo / Redo on Mac and iPad only in this mode. On iPhone the same items are behind an ellipsis button that opens in any tool. Undo and Redo stay available everywhere. |
| Room | Your home base for rooms - creating them, arranging them, and the way into wall editing. Picking Room shows a small palette: a Pointer (the default) plus Box · Box Set · Shapes for drawing, Walls for wall editing, and Connections for checking how rooms join. The Pointer pans the canvas, taps a room to select it, and drags a room to move it (it snaps to neighbours and offers to connect rooms); the buttons on the other side rotate, flip, restyle the name label (Properties) and delete the selected room, and tapping a room’s name label renames it. Box drag-draws a rectangle or taps to drop a default 3 m × 3 m room, Box Set takes a width × height, and Shapes picks Rectangle / L / U / T. Every drawing tool is one-shot: after you draw it hands straight back to the Pointer, so you draw, then move around. More in Rooms & walls. |
| Wall editing | Lives inside the Room tool: select a room, then tap Walls (⌘3 jumps straight in). Blue handles at the midpoint of each wall drag it perpendicular; green handles at each corner let you drag the corner to any angle by eye. Tap a wall to select it (its handles and the set-length pill appear); live interior angle arcs update as you reshape any wall. The palette holds Line (draw a single wall - two taps, with a live ghost preview on Mac) and the editing actions - Knife · Extrude · Move By · Fuse · Delete · Square Up · Set angle. Extrude pulls a wall outward or inward to notch a room, and squares up any corner it leaves within a couple of degrees of 90°. With a keyboard, every action arms from a single letter key (Line L, Knife C, … - see Keyboard shortcuts). Tap empty space (or the ✕) to deselect; Back returns to the Room tool. A wall’s materials and layers open beside the canvas on iPad and Mac, or behind the Properties button on iPhone. |
| Door | Tap a wall to drop a default 0.9 m door (centred and clamped); tap an existing door to edit it. A wall-snapped marker previews placement and greys off open space - doors only go on walls. |
| Window | Same as Door, placing a default 1.2 m window. |
| Opening | Places a frameless gap in a wall - an archway or cased opening with no door or window in it (default 0.9 m wide). Same wall-snapped placement as doors and windows; details in Doors, windows & openings. |
| Fixture | Tap empty space to open the fixture picker; tap an existing fixture to select it for move / rotate / scale. |
| Furniture | The same, filtered to furniture. |
| Light | Tap empty to open the light picker (wall-mounted types snap to the nearest wall); tap a light to select it. |
| Radiator | Like Light, but wall-linking is mandatory - placement always snaps to the nearest wall. |
| Annotation | Documents the plan without adding structure. Its own small palette holds Add text, North arrow, Scale bar and Watermark. The first three arm placement - tap the bubble, then tap the canvas to drop the item (the north arrow and scale bar are one-per-drawing, so their bubble just selects the existing one). Watermark opens an editor for a faint diagonal “DRAFT”-style stamp. A selected annotation gets handles to move, rotate and resize. More in Measurements & properties. |
| Measurement | A tape measure for checking distances - drag from one point to another and the live red line shows its length and angle, snapping to corners, wall faces and items. A measurement isn’t structure: it just sits on the plan, and you can pick it up to move, adjust or delete it (only while this tool is active). By default it’s a working tape that stays off your exports; flip it to a printed dimension from its action palette. More in Measurements & properties. |
On Mac and large iPad the rail is persistent; a chevron hides or shows its labels. On iPhone it fans open and dims the canvas behind it - and while a tool is active, the collapsed button becomes a red ✕ that takes you straight back to the Pointer with one tap. When the Room tool, wall editing or the Annotation tool is active, the rail steps aside so that tool’s own palette owns the edge.
Connections
The Room palette’s Connections button overlays how every room joins its neighbours: green seams are connected, amber seams could connect, and red seams need repair (the same wall traced twice, a room outline that doubles back on itself, or a connected wall that has drifted). A legend at the top counts each kind - tap the counts to open Drawing health for the full list. Tap a seam’s badge to repair just that one, or Clean up to repair everything at once. While the overlay is up the canvas is read-only - pan and zoom stay live, but nothing can be dragged. Press Escape, pick a drawing tool, or leave the Room tool to put it away.
Selecting and manipulating
Tap an element (with its tool active) to select it. What happens next depends on the kind - and on your screen:
- On Mac and iPad, editors open in a panel docked at the side of the canvas. The drawing keeps its full width and never shifts or re-scales; the panel has its own close ✕, and a selection that would be hidden behind it is nudged into view.
- On iPhone, editors are sheets - and selecting doesn’t bury the canvas under one. A selected door, window or opening shows a small action palette (Delete and Properties) plus the top-centre deselect ✕, and can be dragged along its wall while selected; a selected wall keeps its handles, with a Properties button on the wall palette. Either way, the editor opens only when you ask for it.
- Fixtures, furniture, lights and radiators show an in-canvas action palette with quick actions on every platform, plus a Properties button that opens their editor.
For placed items (fixtures and furniture) you get direct handles:
- Move - drag the item.
- Rotate - drag the rotation handle. With Rotation snap on it snaps to 90°; the angle pill lingers ~5 s so you can tap it to type an exact angle.
- Scale - drag the size handle; the size pill opens a Resize panel with width and depth in your unit, plus a scale slider.
- Grid snap - toggle per item to align to the grid.
Other selection aids:
- Nudge pad (bottom corner) - arrow buttons move the selection by 10 mm, or 100 mm with grid snap. In the Room tool it nudges the active room.
- Deselect - a top-centre ✕ clears the selection without hunting for empty canvas.
- Centre on it - selecting never yanks the view; double-tap a selected element (or the active room) to glide it to the centre of the screen at your current zoom (see Canvas & navigation).
On-canvas guidance
The canvas tells you what the active tool will do, so you’re never guessing:
- A persistent capsule at the top-centre names the armed tool’s next action - “Tap to drop a room, or drag to draw one” in the Room tool, “Tap on a wall to add a door”, “Tap to place a light”, and so on. It steps aside while you have something selected or a palette fanned open.
- If a placement misses - a tap that registers but lands somewhere it can’t go - you get a brief notice instead of a silent no-op: tapping off a wall with the Door, Window or Opening tool prompts “Tap on a wall…”, and trying to place a radiator on a drawing with no walls prompts “Add a wall before placing a radiator”.
The very first time you open a fresh, empty drawing, a one-time “Draw your first room” card appears with a few orientation tips (use the Room tool, tap a wall for doors and windows, drag and pinch to navigate). Dismiss it once and it stays gone.
Edit sheets at a glance
On iPad and Mac these open in the side panel; on iPhone they’re sheets.
| Editor | Opens from | Edits |
|---|---|---|
| Door / Window / Opening | Selecting one (iPad/Mac), or its Properties button (iPhone) | Style, width, height, height from floor, door hinge/swing/drawn-open, window thickness, Remove (confirms first) |
| Wall properties | A selected wall (iPad/Mac), or Properties on the wall palette (iPhone) | The material stack |
| Item properties | Fixture / Furniture → Properties | Exact rotation and scale |
| Light | Light → Properties | Type, brightness, colour, mounting height |
| Heat | Radiator → Properties | Type, output (W), length, height, mounting height |
| Room label | Room → Properties | The name label’s size, angle and position - room names show on the canvas while it’s open, even if they’re hidden in Visible layers |
| Properties | Menu → Properties | Drawing properties |
| Room management | The room pill | List / add / rename / delete / solve rooms |
| Background | Menu → Background | A tracing photo, or a walls-only outline of another drawing, behind the grid |
| Drawing health | Menu → Drawing health | Runs the drawing checks on demand - connection repairs, room fixes and an explicit all-clear when everything’s fine (see Drawing health) |
| Settings | Menu → Settings | Canvas & wall style, units, decimals, handedness, grid sizes - plus the Keyboard commands list |
| Visible layers | Menu → Visible layers | Ten visibility toggles (including Measurements and Annotations) and the room-name display |
Undo & redo
Every action is reversible:
- ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z on a keyboard, or the Undo / Redo buttons at the top of the menu on iPhone.
- The history is 50 steps deep.
- One gesture is one step. A whole drag, or a sheet’s worth of slider tweaks, collapses into a single undo entry. Opening and closing an editor without changing anything adds nothing.
- A refused action (for example a wall delete that would break a room) leaves your redo history intact.
- The history lives in memory, so it resets when you close the drawing - but you won’t lose work to a crash: the app autosaves in the background and offers to recover your unsaved changes the next time you open the drawing (see Getting started).
Keyboard, handedness & help
- Keyboard (Mac / iPad with a keyboard): Esc backs out one level per press - it closes an open panel, puts away the Connect overlay, disarms wall editing or a drawing tool, deselects, then collapses the palettes; Delete removes the selection; arrow keys nudge; ⌘C / ⌘V copy and paste a placed item. There’s also a set of selection commands - rotate or duplicate an item, flip a door’s swing or hinge, set a wall’s length - and holding ⇧ turns alignment snap on temporarily. In wall editing and the Room tool, plain letter keys arm the palette actions directly (and a focused text field always wins the keystroke). The full list lives in Settings → Keyboard commands and in Keyboard shortcuts.
- Handedness - Settings has a left/right-handed option that mirrors the palettes so the tools sit under your thumb.
- Help mode - tap the ? to label every on-screen button with its name (on Mac and iPad the labels also show a button’s single-key shortcut, like “Split a wall · C”); the next tap dismisses help without triggering anything.