Manual Tools
Annotations
Mark up the drawing without affecting quantities: revision clouds, rectangles, ellipses, circles, lines, arrows, callouts, dimensions, text boxes, and legends.
Steps
- Open the Annotation menu on the toolbar and point at a category (Text, Shapes, or Lines) to see its tools.
- Pick a tool: Text Box (Shift + T), Callout (Shift + K), Rectangle (Shift + R), Ellipse (Shift + E), Circle, Cloud (Shift + C), Line (Shift + I), Arrow (Shift + A), Dimension (Shift + D), or Legend (Shift + L).
- Draw on the canvas: drag to place clouds, rectangles, ellipses, circles, and text boxes (hold Shift while dragging an ellipse to make it a circle); click points for a line, then double-click or press Enter to finish it; click two points for an arrow or dimension (the arrowhead goes on the second point).
- For a callout, press where the arrow points and drag to place the text box, then type. A plain click puts the box just above and to the right. The text wraps inside the box, and the box grows to fit.
- Press Escape to step back out (finish editing, then deselect, then return to the Select tool).
Notes
- •Annotations never change your takeoff quantities.
- •Rectangles, ellipses, and circles have a border color, a border width, and a fill (No fill by default) with its own opacity. Set them in the bar at the top of the drawing before you draw, or select shapes with the Select tool to restyle them.
- •Undo, Redo, and the Edit menu work on annotations too.
- •The Print dialog (printer icon on the toolbar) has an Annotations checkbox under Include, so you can keep them in or leave them out of the downloaded PDF. Export PDF (all sheets) includes them.
- •Delete or Backspace removes selected annotations when no measurement is selected.