The Basic Drawing Shapes

Getting Started with OpenOffice 4

Chapter 6: Getting Started with Draw

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• What is Draw?
• Parts of the main Draw window
• Choosing and defining colors
• Positioning objects with Snap functions
• Positioning objects with guiding lines
• The basic drawing shapes
  • Drawing a straight line
  • Drawing an arrow
  • Choosing line endings
  • Drawing a rectangle or square
  • Drawing a circle or ellipse
  • Drawing curves
  • Writing text
  • Gluepoints and connectors
• Drawing geometric shapes
• Selecting objects
• Moving and dynamically adjusting an object’s size
• Editing objects
• Using styles
• Special effects
• Combining multiple objects
• Aids for positioning objects
• Inserting and editing pictures
• Working with 3D objects
• Exporting graphics
• Adding comments to a drawing

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The Basic Drawing Shapes

Draw provides a wide range of shapes, located in palettes accessed from the Properties deck of the Sidebar or the Drawing Toolbar. This section describes only a few of the basic shapes. These shapes include; rectangles and squares, circles, ellipses, and arcs, 3D objects, curves, lines and arrows, text, and connectors. All shapes in Draw are called objects. See the Draw Guide for a complete description of the shapes available.

When you draw a basic shape or select one for editing, the Info field on the left side in the status bar changes to reflect the present action: Create Line , Text frame xxyy selected, and so on.

Figure 144 shows part of the Drawing toolbar with the icons needed in the following sections. The Text icon is also included. These same icons are displayed in the Sidebar.

Figure 144: Part of the Drawing toolbar