Drawing guides
The three guides that steer the pen as you draw — symmetry, rulers and perspective — where they live, and the order they are applied in.
Reference
- Tool
- Draw
- Panel
- Tool Options
- Section
- Symmetry · Ruler · Perspective
A guide changes where the pen puts ink. Alekhya has three, and they all live in the same place: the bottom of the Draw tool's Tool Options panel, each under its own heading, each switched on by a single checkbox at its head. Everything below that checkbox appears only while the guide is on.
The guides act on freehand strokes only
The Shape tool's Tool Options shows the same three sections, because the two tools share one brush panel — but a rubber-band shape is generated from its two corners rather than drawn sample by sample, so no guide is applied to it. A rectangle is not mirrored, and a Shape line is not pulled onto a ruler. Draw the mark by hand if you want a guide on it.
| Guide | What it does to a stroke |
|---|---|
| Symmetry | Replicates it — mirrored, quartered, or rotated into a rosette. |
| Rulers | Pulls it onto a line, an ellipse, a ring, a spoke, or a rail you drew earlier. |
| Perspective | Pulls it onto one of a construction's axes — a convergence line to a vanishing point, or true vertical or horizontal. |
All three can be on at once. Each is independent of the others, and each is remembered with the shot.
Guides are glued to the drawing, not to the screen
A guide is defined in the active layer's canvas space — the same flat (s, t) coordinate
system a stroke's points are stored in — rather than in screen coordinates. Two consequences
follow, and both are the point of the design.
Orbiting does not move a guide. Turn the viewport camera and the mirror axis stays on the drawing where you put it, the way a pencil line drawn on the paper would. A guide defined on screen would slide off the artwork at the first camera move.
On a bent surface, a guide bends with it. Because canvas space maps onto whatever shape the layer's drawing surface has, a straight ruler drawn on a cylinder comes out as a ring around it, and on a sphere as a great circle. There is no separate set of 3D guides — the flat ones already are the 3D ones. This is also why the ruler list has a Follows the surface group: Surface U and Surface V are the straight ruler pre-aimed along the surface's own two axes.
In a 2D shot
All three guides work exactly as described. A flat document's canvas space is the picture plane, so the bending case simply never arises. See 2D shots.
The order they are applied in
When more than one guide is on, a stroke passes through them in a fixed order:
Stabilization
The raw pen samples are smoothed first, so a guide is never fed the pen's jitter.
Ruler snap
The stroke is pulled onto the ruler.
Perspective snap
The stroke is pulled onto the perspective axis it best matches.
Symmetry replication
The finished stroke is copied across the symmetry group.
Symmetry comes last on purpose. If the copies were made first and snapped afterwards, every mirrored stroke would be dragged back onto the ruler you drew your own stroke against, and the mirror would collapse.
Moving a guide
Every guide is placed on the canvas by dragging its handles, not by typing numbers. Switching one on for the first time in a shot drops it in the middle of the current view; after that it stays where you leave it.
| Guide | Handles |
|---|---|
| Symmetry | A teal dot at the origin moves the axis; an orange grip further along it swings the angle. |
| Ruler | An amber dot at the origin moves it; a blue grip turns it. Ellipse rulers add a size grip. |
| Perspective | One handle per vanishing point, plus a handle on the horizon that carries the whole construction. |
Handles are hit-tested before the brush is, so grabbing one never lays down ink. Each guide's panel also carries a Show guide checkbox: switching the overlay off leaves the guide working but invisible.
What is saved
Each guide is stored with the shot, so a document reopens with its axis, its rail and its vanishing points exactly where you left them — including the rail you drew for a Curve ruler. Shots saved before guides existed simply open with all three off.
Symmetry and the ruler belong to the layer's canvas space; the perspective construction is scene-level — one guide the whole shot is built in, which is what lets it be drawn on every drawing plane at once.
See also
Mirror, Quadrant, Radial and Mandala, and how many copies each makes.
RulersAll nine rulers, and which ones anchor to the stroke rather than to themselves.
Perspective1-, 2- and 3-point and fisheye, the axis set, and one guide across many planes.
The Draw toolThe tool whose panel carries all three.