Creating Your Own Shapes and Objects
SmartDraw comes with thousands of symbols to help you create professional-looking floor plans quickly and easily. You'll find everything from gym equipment to office and home furnishings.
But if you can't find a particular symbol that you need, you can always draw it yourself using the freeform drawing tools.
Drawing with the Polygon Line Tool
You can draw a new shape with the Polygon Line Tool.
Start by clicking in the drawing area at the point you want your shape to begin and continue clicking to draw more segments.
A line segment is automatically added to the line for each point that you click.
The shape will close automatically when you click again on the starting point. To indicate that the shape is ready to be closed, your pencil cursor will have a circle at the end. To leave it as a line, simply press the Esc key when you are done drawing it.
Edit the New Shape's Outline
Each segment in the line or shape you draw is initially a straight line with a black diamond-shaped adjustment handle in the center. If you click and drag this handle, the shape resizes such that only the two lines connected to the line you are dragging change size.
To curve a line segment of your polygon line shape, select it, then click Change Shape in the Design tab. From the menu, select Edit Shape Outline.
Now, when you right-click the border of your shape, there will be an option to Change Segment Shape, in which you can choose from four different segment shapes. A white diamond-shaped handle appears in the center of the segment you right-clicked. Drag this handle to change the arc of the segment.
Since you can do this for all of the line segments of your shape, you can draw virtually any shape or line.
Delete and Add Line Segments
To delete a growth handle, hold down the Ctrl key as you select it (this will turn the growth handle green) and then press the Delete key. Deleting a growth handle will also delete a line segment from your shape. The shape must still be in the Edit Shape Outline mode (white diamond handles, not black) for this to work.
To add a new line segment, click Add Corner in SmartPanel, then click on the shape where you would like to add the handle to a new segment. A green growth handle appears where you clicked, and you can drag this handle to shape the segment however you would like.
To get rid of the growth and adjustment handles, simply click off the shape. If you need to edit it again, right click on the shape and select Edit Shape Outline from the pop-up menu or go to the Design tab.