Graphicals Features




In this part, we are going to talk about the graphicals features of LaTeXDraw. But before that, we must explain what is a delimitor : it is a purple, green, red, ... square delimiting a selected figure, like show in the following picture :
rectangle
You can move these delimitors to change the shape of the figures like explained in these following paragraphes.







Select figures

You can select a figure by :
  • Clicking on the borders of a figure
  • Clicking in the interior of a filled figure
  • Pressing the left button and drag the mouse to the wanted figures
To select a grid you must use the third case. Indeed, it will be annoying if you have a grid in the backgroud of your drawing and a rectangle, for example, placed on the grid ; if you want to selected the rectangle, the grid will be selected to ...

To unselect figures, click in an empty place in the draw panel.





Move figures

To move select figures, you must :
  • Pressing the left button on the borders, or in the interior of a filled figure, or on the delimitors and drag the figure ;
  • Pressing the right button anywhere in the draw panel and drag the figure. Beware, if you do a rigth click, a popup menu will appear.




Rescale figures

You can rescale a figure by dragging one of the delimitors. If you have selected several figures, you can rescale all of them by dragging the delimitors which framing all the selected shapes.



Put a figure in front, behind, ... an other figure

toolbar
With the toolbar you can place a figure :
  • In the background of the drawing with the button : background
  • In the foreground of the drawing with the button : foreground
  • Behind an other figure with the button : behind. After have clicked on this button, you must click on the figure you to be in front of the selected figures.
  • In front an other figure with the button : inFrontOf
  • . After have clicked on this button, you must click on the figure you to be behind the selected figures.




Rotate figures

rotation

This mini-toolbar allow to rotate figures:
  • The button without arrow allows to rotate a or several figures with the mouse; to do that, you just have to drag one of the delimitors (by clicking of this button all the delimitors become green). To come back to the normal mode, you must click again on this button (the delimitors will take their original colour);
  • The buttons with an arrow allow to rotate immediately a or several figures or 90, 180 and 270°.




Join/separate several selected figures

LaTeXDraw can join several selected figures ; for that, select several figures and click on the following button join in the toolbar. All these figures will be joined in order to create only one figure.

By the same way, you can separate joined figures using this button separate.



Change the dimensions of the drawing

By default, the dimensions of the drawing are framed by all the figures. You can display the borders of the drawing with the following button in the "Draw" menu borders. For example, it can be :

borders
Where the borders of the drawing is the rectangle framing all the figures.

You can change the dimensions of the drawing by :
  • Clicking of the button borders to display the borders
  • Desactivate the auto update of the borders of the drawing using this button in the menu "Draw" : autoBorders
  • Clicking on the "selection" button in order to select the borders select
Then, the delimitors of the borders of the sketch must be displayed like in this picture :

borders
Now, You can change the dimensions of the sketch by dragging these delimitors.

In a LaTeX document a change of the dimensions of the drawing change the disposition of the document like show in the following picture :

example





The mirrors

Mirror

There is two mirrors: vertical an horizontal. It works with an axial symmetry by using the gravity center of the selected figure or of the group of selected figures.

For the moment, when a picture, a grid or axes are transformed with this feature, their coordinates are moved but the shape is not realy changed; in a future release, an option will allow the user to do that (there is the same problem for gradient: when you apply a mirror, the gradient is not changed).



The magnetic grids

Magnet

This feature is very usefull when you want to place figures.
To have a magnetic grid, selected the checkbox; but to display the grid you have to select it in the menu "Display"->"Grid"->"Standard grid" or "Personal grid".

  • The standard grid: this grid is define in centimeter or in inch (you can choose it);
  • The personal grid: this grid allows you to define the interval between the lines of the grid; to do that, you can use to field near the "Magnetic checkbox" checkbox. This field is enable only when the personal grid is displayed.