Shared tool behavior (snapping, ortho, exact input, selection, utility tools)

Partly availableSome of what this page describes is in DimSum today and some is still coming. Parts marked Coming are designed but not built yet.

The rules every drawing, dimension, annotation and takeoff tool follows (familiar mouse and keys), plus the utility tools Select, Pan, Zoom, Quick Measure, Quick Area and Quick Count.

Overview

Every tool in DimSum is drawn the same way: arm it, left-click points, finish, edit with handles. Learn these rules once and every tool (a dimension line, a highlight, a wall takeoff) behaves predictably. This doc also covers the utility tools that don't create anything permanent unless you press Keep: Select, Pan, Zoom, Quick Measure, Quick Area and Quick Count.

Input	While drawing
Left-click	Places a point. That's all it does.
Right-click (tap)	Opens the context menu (copy / paste / delete…)
Right-drag or middle-drag	Pans the canvas
Middle-click alone	Does nothing
Wheel	Zooms
Backspace	Picks up (removes) the previous point
N	Starts a new section of the same tool: finishes the current run/polygon and starts the next shape in the same instance
Enter or double-click	Ends the run and starts another — optional, never required
Esc	Ends the run, keeps everything and puts the tool away
Arrow key	Locks the drawing direction and opens the length dialog. Number keys are never swallowed by the canvas
Space	Opens the same dialog for a free angle + length

Where to find it

• Tools live on the ribbon tabs (Page, Dimension, Draw, Annotate, Takeoff, Extract) and in the Tools panel. See Project Canvas layout.
• Select and Pan are on the Page tab; Quick Measure, Quick Area and Quick Count are on the Dimension tab.
• Behavior settings: Settings → Canvas & Drawing (snap types and tolerance, ortho, crosshair and cursor lines, selection colors, handle size, line weights, scroll behavior, trackpad).

How to use it

Draw any tool

1. Arm the tool: click it on the ribbon or Tools panel, or press its shortcut (e.g. D Dimension Line, L Solid Line, 1 Linear takeoff). The cursor becomes a crosshair with the tool icon, and the status bar shows the next step ("Click first point — Esc to stop").
2. Left-click to place each point.
3. Made a mistake? Backspace picks up the previous point. Press it again to keep backing up.
4. You don't have to finish it. Every point you place is committed as you place it — there is no draft that can be lost (see below). Enter or double-click ends the run and starts another, but it's optional. (Right-click does not finish; it opens the context menu.)
5. Next piece of the same tool: press N to start a new section: the current run ends and your next click starts a new shape in the same instance (e.g. the next wall run of "Ext Wall 2x6"). Clicking the tool in the Tools panel always starts a new instance instead; to add to an item you finished earlier, use Continue this item (below).
6. Stop: Esc ends the run, keeps everything you placed, and returns to Select.

Nothing is a draft

A shape becomes real the moment it is valid — 2 points for a linear, 3 for an area, 1 for a count — and every further point extends the real shape.

What it buys you:

• Esc never throws work away. This settles the old open question in the only direction that's safe.
• A crash mid-run keeps every point you placed, not just your last finished shape.
• Enter stops being a thing you have to remember.

A run too short to be a valid shape creates nothing — and says so, rather than failing quietly.

Undo is per point. Ctrl+Z removes the last point, not the whole run — Backspace while drawing does the same thing, so there's one rule instead of two. Backing out of a forty-point wall is forty undos, which is what the Undo History list is for: one click jumps back as far as you want in a single step.

Drawn at full width as you go

While you draw a run whose tool has a Line Width:

• Every span you have placed, and the span following the cursor, is drawn as the finished band — full width, on the tool's Draw Side, mitred at the corners, in the item's colour — from the first click. There is no thin line first. The corner you are about to make is mitred against where the cursor is, and moves with it.
• Nothing jumps when the run ends. Esc, Enter and double-click finish as before; the only thing that goes is the span out to the cursor, which was never placed. What you placed was already drawn exactly as it is stored.
• A dashed line and the length label ride along the drawn line of the span following the cursor — the only sign it is still being drawn.
• What you have placed snaps, straight away: its corners (the mitred one too) and its faces catch the next point, the same box every finished run offers (below) — even in the instant before the core has handed the span back. The span following the cursor never catches, or the cursor would chase itself.
• Backspace / Ctrl+Z, ortho, the arrow-key length dialog and Space work as they always have; the band follows whatever point they give.
• A tool with no Line Width (none set, blank or zero) draws exactly as before: a thin preview line, and the width-less line once placed. On an unscaled sheet a width cannot be drawn, so the run is drawn the way the finished run is drawn there.

Ctrl draws on the other side

It's Ctrl, because Shift already turns ortho on while you draw.

• Hold Ctrl while you place a span and that span goes on the other side of the line: Right becomes Left, Left becomes Right. You see it live: the span following the cursor jumps over while Ctrl is down and comes back when you let go. The status bar reads Other side (Ctrl) while it's held.
• The click decides. The side in force when you click is the side that span keeps. Spans already drawn don't move, flipped or not, so you can flip any span of a wall and only that one.
• The item's Draw Side is never changed by Ctrl. It stays the side for every span you didn't flip.
• Where the side changes, the corner is a plain joint: each span stops square at the shared point. Corners between spans on the same side stay mitred, as before.
• Carrying on an item works the same way — a new run with N, Draw more points or Continue: hold Ctrl for a new span and only that span flips.
• Undo is still per point. Each span is one Undo, and its side goes with it: Ctrl+Z (or Backspace) takes the span back, side and all, and Redo puts both back.
• Snapping, clicking and selecting follow each span's band: the corners and faces you snap to, and where a click picks the wall, are where that span is drawn.
• Quantities don't change. Length is still measured along the line you clicked (the centreline), whichever side the band is on, and {Draw Side} in a formula reads the item's Draw Side.
• A Draw Side that's Locked, or set by a formula, isn't flipped: Ctrl does nothing, and while it's held the status bar says Draw Side is set by the tool.
• Centerline has no other side, so Ctrl does nothing there; nor on a tool with no Line Width, which draws as before.
• Print and Export PDF draw each span on its own side, with the same plain joints and mitres as the screen (Marked-up plans → Walls print at their Line Width).
• An older DimSum still opens the job, and draws every span on the item's Draw Side.
• Nothing else changes. Shift is still ortho. Ctrl chords — Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Enter, Ctrl+C and the rest — pass straight through and work as before; holding Ctrl through one only shows the other side while the key is down.
• Switching away lets go. If DimSum loses focus while Ctrl is down — Alt+Tab to another window, say — the flip is let go, so the span following the cursor never sticks on the other side. Ctrl is also read again on every mouse move and click, so a Ctrl pressed or let go while another window had focus is caught as soon as the mouse moves.

Cursor lines

While a drawing tool is armed, two thin lines run through the cursor — one horizontal, one vertical — from edge to edge of the canvas pane. The cursor sits where they cross.

• They go through the snapped point, not the raw mouse. When a snap catches a corner or a face, the lines jump to it, so they cross exactly where your click will land. Under ortho or a locked direction they go through the point ortho gives you — still true horizontal and vertical — so you can line the next point up with something across the sheet.
• Look: 1 px each, in the theme's accent colour at 60%, with a faint halo so they read on a white sheet and across dark linework. They're drawn over the plan and the takeoff, under the snap marker's word and any dialog.
• When they show: only while a tool that places points is armed — Linear, Area and Count, a cutout, and the Dimension Line — and while Region scale is on, where they cross at the corner of the box you're dragging (Page tools → scale regions). Not in Select. They hide when the mouse leaves the pane, and come back when it returns.
• Turn them off: click Cursor lines in the status bar, beside Snap and Ortho. It holds for the rest of the session. Whether they start on each launch is System Settings → Canvas & Drawing → Cursor lines start on — on out of the box. There's no key for it.
• They cost nothing you'd notice — about 0.1 ms a mouse move. Moving them moves two thin lines; the plan and the takeoff aren't redrawn for them.
• Each pane has its own. In split view, each pane, and the pop-out window, draws its own lines. On a turned or straightened page they stay level and plumb on screen.

Drawing inside a scale region

A shape whose first point is inside a scale region is measured at the region's scale — and it's drawn at that scale too, as you draw it. Its full-width band, the segment lengths, the live quantity chip, the snap box and clicking on it all use the region's scale, so what you see is what's measured. Outside every region, the page scale, as before.

Lengths on takeoff after placement

The dimension boxes are the length labels a Linear or Area run shows while you draw it. On screen and in Settings they're called Takeoff lengths.

Three levels, and the nearest wins:

Level	Where	Choices	Starts at
This computer	System Settings → Markups → Takeoff lengths → Show after placement	On / Off	Off
The tool	Tool Settings → Lengths tab (a Linear or Area tool) → Show after placement	Follow System Settings (Hide), Show or Hide	Follow System Settings
The item	Properties → Appearance → Lengths, or right-click → Show lengths / Hide lengths	Follow the tool, Show or Hide	Follow the tool

• The tool's choice is set on the job's copy of the tool, so it reaches every item of that tool in this job, unless an item says otherwise. Updating the tool from its library later keeps the job's choice. An item drawn with a default tool has no tool to set, and the Lengths tab says so.
• The item's choice — in Properties, or on the right-click menu (Show lengths on 3 items for several) — is one Undo for all of them: Show lengths — Ext Wall 2x6, Hide lengths — 3 items, Lengths follow the tool — Ext Wall 2x6.
• So you can leave them off everywhere and turn them on for one wall tool, or for one item.
• While you draw, the live labels always show, as before: 11 px on screen, ft-in, whatever the settings say.

What they look like — the first block on System Settings → Markups, with a live preview and Back to the defaults; on the tool's Lengths tab each one is a list that starts at Follow System Settings (…), with Follow System Settings for everything to clear them all:

Setting	Choices	Starts at
Text size	The text size, pt on the sheet; the box is sized to it	7 pt
Text colour	Black, or The tool's colour	Black
Box	Paper white, The tool's colour, lightened, or No box	Paper white
Box edge	Grey, or None	Grey
Box opacity	Of the box; the text is always solid	90%
Unit	Feet-inches, Feet or Inches	Feet-inches
Precision	A fraction (1/2" … 1/64"), or 0–4 decimals; fractions are greyed for Feet, which shows 2 decimals	1/16"

What they show:

• A Linear: one label per span, at its midpoint, with the span's centreline length — the same number the quantity adds up — at that span's own scale. Never the band's faces.
• An Area: each edge's length, at the area's scale. Not its cutouts' edges.
• A Count: nothing.
• On an unscaled page: nothing, since there's no length to show.
• On a turned page the box stays level and upright on screen, as it is while drawing.

When a label is left out, so a busy sheet stays readable:

• A label shows only when its span is at least 60 px long on screen and longer than its own box (the live labels while drawing use 44 px).
• Text under about 5 px tall on screen isn't drawn — zoomed far out, they simply go.
• Where two would overlap, the longer span's label wins and the other is dropped, not shrunk. Ties go the same way every time, so labels don't flicker as you pan.

They follow this computer, live. Unlike markups, takeoff lengths are a way of showing numbers, not something drawn, so the System Settings choice is read live, like Decimal places: a job opened on another computer shows that computer's choice, unless the tool or the item says Show or Hide. The tool's and the item's choices travel with the job. They never change a quantity.

Speed: they're drawn on a layer of their own, redrawn when the view or the takeoff changes — never on a mouse move — and only for spans in view. A pan slides them as they are; they're laid out again 120 ms after the view stops moving, when labels scrolled in from the edge appear. A zoom lays them out at once.

Print: a Takeoff lengths tick under Include, starting from the Show ▸ Takeoff lengths switch; they print as the same box at the same size on the sheet (Marked-up plans). Show ▸ Takeoff lengths (at the foot of Markup ▾, or right-click → Show or hide markups…) hides them all on screen at once, as view state kept with the job.

Also fixed: a length with no whole inches and a fraction, like 15'-0 1/16", used to read 15'-01/16" wherever DimSum wrote feet and inches. It now always has the space.

Pan while drawing

• Right-drag or middle-drag pans (hold the button and move). A quick right-click without moving opens the context menu instead.
• Space+drag also pans (for trackpads and laptops).
• The tool stays armed and the shape in progress is kept.

Snap to exact points

1. Make sure Snap is on (S toggles it; the status bar shows Snap ●).
2. Move the cursor near a corner, midpoint, face or line. A snap marker shows what it caught — □ end, □ vertex, △ midpoint, ◇ corner, ⋈ line, ⋈ face — and the word beside it, so two shapes that share a marker are never the same answer.
3. Click while the marker shows; the point lands exactly there.

Every drawn shape exposes snap points. Not just its vertices: ends, corners, faces and the centerline of a shape are all snappable, so the next tool lands exactly on the last one. This is what makes wall corners clean — two wall runs that snap together share the corner, and the wall drawn first owns it in {L-Corners}, so nothing is double-counted (Wall tools).

The drawn width is a box, and every corner of it snaps

• Every corner, at any width, on any Draw Side — the four corners of each span, the mitred corner two spans of one run share, and the square end at each end of the run.
• The faces are snap lines, not points: a face catches anywhere along its length, so you do not have to find the end of it.
• The drawn line is a target of its own on every shape that has one — a run, an area's edge, a cutout's edge.
• The run you are drawing counts: its placed spans offer their corners and faces from the moment they are clicked; the span following the cursor offers nothing.
• The corner you catch is the corner that was inked. The ink, the click target and the snap points are worked out from one set of numbers, so a mitre snaps where it is drawn and not near it.

A T works because the nearest line wins. Draw a beam into the stem of a T and it catches the top's face, not its centre line: at a real width the stem meets the face first, and the face and the line are ranked together on purpose. Where a Right-side band's near face lies on the line the two are the same distance away, they tie, and the line takes it — it is the truer name for that place.

An item with no box behaves exactly as before: no width, an unscaled sheet, or fewer than two distinct points, and it offers its line, its ends and its midpoints, which is what it always offered.

Dimension Lines and markups. A Dimension Line snaps to everything above, and to the two ends of other Dimension Lines (End), so dimensions line up end to end. Markups never catch a snap. Neither snaps to the plan's own linework yet — that waits for vector snapping.

Coming cross-item intersections, and snapping to another item's box corner as a corner while that item is being dragged by one of its vertices — its line, ends and midpoints still catch while you drag.

Draw straight (Ortho)

Ortho is on by default and stays where you put it. It follows what you are drawing, so a cutout gets it too; the only thing that never has ortho is a count, where it could only drag marks off the spot you clicked.

1. Hold Shift while moving to the next point, or toggle Ortho on with O.
2. The segment locks to 0 / 45 / 90° (increment configurable in Settings).

Exact input by arrow keys

Typing a number on the canvas never draws anything — the arrow keys do. This keeps the number keys free for tool shortcuts (1/2/3 stay Linear/Area/Point even mid-shape).

1. After placing a point, press an arrow key (↑ ↓ ← →). That locks the direction of the next segment; the locked direction is drawn as a ray from the last point.
2. A small length dialog opens at the cursor. Type the length, e.g. 12'6".
3. Press Enter. The point is placed exactly that far in the locked direction, and the tool stays armed for the next point.

• 45° directions: hold Shift with the arrow key (e.g. Shift+→ = 45° up-right).
• Nudge the angle: Alt+arrow rotates the locked direction by the ortho increment.
• Free angle: press Space while drawing to open the same dialog with an editable angle and length, for anything that isn't on an arrow.
• Esc closes the dialog and leaves the direction lock, without placing the point.

💡 This is the fast way to draw from printed dimensions: snap to the corner, →, 24', Enter, ↑, 12'6", Enter.

Zoom without leaving the tool

• Mouse wheel zooms (toward the cursor).
• The tool stays armed and the shape in progress is kept.

Select and edit

1. Press V (or Esc to stop the current tool) for the Select tool.
2. Click a tool to select it. Drag a box: left→right selects items fully inside; right→left selects everything the box crosses. Shift/Ctrl+click adds to the selection.
3. The selected shape shows handles:

• vertex handles: drag to move a point (it re-snaps),
• midpoint handles: drag to insert a new vertex,
• a bounding box: drag to move, use the rotate handle to rotate.

4. Right-click a vertex → Delete vertex (the context menu adapts to what's under the cursor).
5. Right-click the tool for the context menu: Properties, Hide, Lock, Duplicate, Copy/Cut/Paste (in place or at cursor, to other pages), Bring to front / Send to back, Save as tool, Attach file…, Delete.
6. Double-click to open its settings; or edit in the Properties panel (F4).

Adding to an item you already finished

A finished item is never a dead end. There are three ways to add to one, and which you want depends on whether the new work is part of the same shape, the same item, or neither.

Command	What you get
Draw more points	Carries on from the last point of the last shape. The wall gets longer; nothing new appears in the tree.
New section	A separate run in the same item — one name, one total.
New item like this	A separate item copied from this one, with its own total.

This started as one command. So there are two.

• right-click the item in the Project Tree or the Takeoff summary
• right-click any of its shapes on the canvas
• the Draw more points and New section buttons in the Properties panel
• or Ctrl+Enter with it selected — that is Draw more points, the one you want without letting go of the mouse

(Double-clicking a tree row still renames it, and later opens the Tool Settings dialog, so continuing is not on double-click.)

One item, several sheets. A run you draw stays on the sheet you drew it on, and belongs to the item you were adding to — one name, one total, across the set.

Two halves made it work, and either alone would have been useless: shape.add takes a page and journals it, and the canvas lists shapes by page rather than asking each item filed under that page. A page that is recorded but never queried changes nothing.

An item still has a home page — the one it was created on — because the Project tree has to file it somewhere. That is a filing decision, not a drawing one.

Draw more points is the one exception, deliberately: it extends a single existing shape, and a shape lives on exactly one sheet, so it takes you to that shape's sheet and says so.

While it's armed, the bar above the sheet names the item your next click will join, so you always know where the quantity is going.

Draw more points and New section both add to the same item. New item like this copies it into a separate one (see Instances & shapes).

One thing to know about Backspace. After Draw more points it keeps taking points back past where you resumed — that is per-point undo being consistent, but it means a 3-point area can vanish under a few presses. Ctrl+Z brings it back. Tell us if it should stop at the resume point instead (open question O-18).

Undo anything

Ctrl+Z undo, Ctrl+Y redo. Unlimited within the session and stored in the project journal. There is one shared history for the whole project: canvas edits, Estimating tab edits, property and Settings changes all go into the same stack.

Undo History list: a dropdown next to the undo button lists the recent actions in order. Click any entry and everything back to that point is undone in one step — 50+ steps at once — so a bulk change that went wrong is one click to reverse instead of fifty Ctrl+Z.

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Utility tools

Select (V / Esc)

• Looks: the standard arrow cursor.
• Operates: click, box select (window/crossing), Shift/Ctrl to add; shows handles on selected items.
• Uses: pick tools to edit, move, copy, hide, lock or delete.

Pan (H / right-drag / middle-drag / Space+drag)

• Looks: hand cursor.
• Operates: with the Pan tool, left-drag moves the view. From any tool, right-drag, middle-drag or Space+drag pans temporarily.
• Uses: navigating large sheets; with a trackpad, two-finger scroll (per Settings).

Zoom

Action	How
Zoom in/out	Mouse wheel (Settings can switch wheel to pan)
Fit page	Ctrl+0
100%	Ctrl+1
Zoom to selection	Z

Quick Measure (M)

• Looks: a temporary ruler line with a live tooltip showing length and angle.
• Place it: press M; left-click point 1; left-click point 2 (and more points to keep measuring).
• Operates: uses the page (or region) scale; nothing is saved until you press Keep.
• Keep it: Keep turns the measurement into a permanent Dimension Line — or, if you pick a tool in the Keep dialog, into a real Linear takeoff instance.
• Edit: once kept, it edits like any Dimension Line or Linear instance.
• Uses: quick checks ("is that room really 14'?"), verifying a scale, measuring before choosing a tool.

Quick Area

• Looks: a temporary polygon with a live tooltip showing area and perimeter.
• Place it: click vertices; Enter/double-click closes it.
• Operates: nothing is saved until you press Keep.
• Keep it: Keep turns it into a real Area instance using the tool you pick.
• Uses: a quick room size or a slab area before deciding how to take it off.

Quick Count

• Looks: temporary click markers with a live count.
• Place it: click each item; the running total shows at the cursor.
• Keep it: Keep turns the clicks into a real Point instance using the tool you pick.
• Uses: "how many of these are there?" before deciding whether it's worth a tool.

Keep (Quick Measure / Quick Area / Quick Count)

Nothing is lost when a "quick look" turns out to be real takeoff. Keep opens a small dialog:

Field	What it does
Keep as	Dimension (Quick Measure only), or a takeoff instance
Tool	Pick the tool to use: Linear (from Quick Measure), Area (from Quick Area), Point (from Quick Count)
Instance	New instance, or add the shape to an existing instance of that tool
Name	Defaults to the tool name

The measured geometry becomes the instance's first shape, on the page it was drawn on, at the page's scale. From then on it's an ordinary instance: parts, properties, colors, reports, everything.

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Options & settings

Common properties (every tool)

Property	What it does	Default
Name	Display name in the tree and reports	The tool's name
Layer / type	Category of the tool (Takeoff, Dimension, Draw, Annotation)	By tool
Color	Stroke/fill color. Takeoff tools: one color, set by the tool.	By tool/style
Line weight	Stroke width	Settings → Canvas & Drawing
Line style	Solid, dashed, custom (Draw tools)	Solid
Opacity	Transparency	100% (highlights 35%)
Locked	Can't be moved/edited on the canvas (Ctrl+L)	Off
Visible	Shown or hidden (Ctrl+H)	On
Created by	{User > Initials}	Current user
Created / modified date (and by whom)	Audit trail on every item: when, who, and where it is on the plan; usable in reports	Automatic
Notes	Free text
Tags	Labels for filtering (tree filter, reports)

Canvas & Drawing settings

Setting	What it does
Snap types	Endpoints, midpoints, existing tool vertices, box corners, faces and lines, intersections, perpendicular, nearest-on-line, PDF/CAD vector geometry
Snap tolerance	How close the cursor must be to snap (10 px out of the box)
Ortho default + angle increment	On/off at start; 45° default increment
Crosshair style	Crosshair look. Its first real setting is Cursor lines start on — the two lines through the cursor, above
Selection colors, handle size	Selection look
Default line weights	For new markups
Mouse/scroll behavior	Wheel = zoom (default) or pan. Buttons follow the familiar defaults (left = place, right tap = menu, right/middle-drag = pan)
Trackpad gestures	Pinch zoom, two-finger pan
	the text and line weights of markups, Dimension Lines and takeoff lengths are sized on the sheet — they zoom with the plan and print as seen — with no switch. Their sizes are on System Settings → Markups

Examples

• Tracing a wall run: arm the wall tool, snap to the corner (□), press → to lock the direction, type 24' in the length dialog, Enter; turn the corner with ↑, type 12'6", Enter; Enter to finish.
• Several separate wall runs in one instance: draw the front wall run, press N, draw the garage wall run, press N, draw the rear run, Esc. One instance, three shapes, one total.
• Reaching the far side of the sheet mid-wall: hold the right (or middle) button and drag to pan, then keep clicking; the wall in progress is untouched.
• A quick look that turns real: Quick Area a bedroom to see if it's worth its own flooring line, decide it is, press Keep, pick the "Flooring – LVP" tool, and the polygon you already drew becomes the instance.

Tips & shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Select / stop tool	V / Esc
Pan	H / right-drag / middle-drag / Space+drag
Zoom fit / 100% / selection	Ctrl+0 / Ctrl+1 / Z
Quick Measure	M
Lock direction + length dialog	↑ ↓ ← → (Shift+arrow = 45°, Alt+arrow nudges)
Free angle + length dialog	Space (while drawing)
End run and start another (optional)	Enter / double-click
New section (same tool)	N
Remove previous point	Backspace
Toggle Snap / Ortho	S / O (hold Shift for temporary ortho)
Draw more points (carry on from the last point)	Ctrl+Enter, or right-click it in the tree, the summary or the canvas
New section (another run in the same item)	right-click it, or the Properties button
Hide / Lock selected	Ctrl+H / Ctrl+L
Copy / Paste / Paste in place	Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V / Ctrl+Shift+V. Copy and Paste: the copies go into the same items, centred on the cursor, as one Undo. Cut and Paste in place are later
Undo / Redo	Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y
Undo History list	dropdown next to the undo button
Command palette	Ctrl+K

Rules, limits & edge cases

• Right-click never finishes a shape (the familiar way). A right-tap opens the menu; a right-drag pans. DimSum tells them apart by movement.
• A context-menu action acts on what you right-clicked. Right-clicking selects its target first, so an action offered for the thing under the cursor always runs on it. No menu action may fail silently — if it can't run, it says why, where you're looking.
• No command is keyboard-only. Every command with a shortcut also has a button or a context-menu entry. A build-time command audit fails if a command has a shortcut and no mouse route, and every shortcut stays rebindable in Settings.
• Snap and ortho defaults belong to the tool, but your toggles are yours: each tool carries its own snap on/off, snap types, ortho on/off and ortho increment. Those are the values a new project starts with — arming a tool does not reset them.
• Ortho is judged on what you are drawing, not on what is armed: it applies to anything drawn as a line between two places, which is everything except a count. That distinction is not academic — a cutout is started from an area's right-click menu while another tool is still armed, so keying ortho off the armed tool meant a cutout drawn with Count armed had no ortho at all. The toggle greys out only while a count is the thing being placed.
• Middle-click alone does nothing on the canvas.
• N is "new section", not Note. The Note tool moved to Shift+N.
• Number keys are never captured by the canvas. Even mid-shape, 1/2/3 arm Linear/Area/Point. Lengths are only ever typed into the length dialog opened by an arrow key or Space.
• Shift means Ortho while drawing but "add to selection" with the Select tool; Ctrl adds to selection with Select but chains segments with Solid Line (Draw tools) — and, while drawing a Linear with a Line Width, holding Ctrl puts the band on the other side — only the span being placed (above).
• Hand-entered numbers beat the drawing. A length typed into the length dialog (or into a property) is the value used; if the drawn geometry disagrees, a ⚠ badge shows the difference rather than silently overwriting what you typed.
• Locked tools can't be moved or edited on the canvas.
• Hidden tools are not snappable.
• Takeoff tools ignore a per-shape color: the tool's one color applies.
• Snap priority. Strict bands, the lowest band with anything in it winning outright and the nearest in screen pixels winning inside a band: 1 the line's own ends and vertices, 2 a box corner, 3 midpoints, 4 the drawn line and the box's faces together, then perpendicular / nearest-on-line / plan vectors. Every point beats every line; among lines the nearest wins, which is what makes the T work. Full table: Geometry & units

Related features

• Dimension tools · Draw tools · Annotation tools · Elevation Faces
• Takeoff tools · Line extraction (vector snap)
• Project Canvas layout · Settings page
• Keyboard shortcuts