Mastering LibreOffice Draw

LibreOffice Draw provides many predefined shapes to use in creating drawings. These shapes can be found in various places and accessed in a number of different ways. You can also employ various methods when inserting the objects into your drawings. You can use these shapes as is, alter them, or combine them with other shapes to meet your needs.

LibreOffice Draw provides a number of ways to select individual objects or several objects at one time. You can even select objects that are hidden behind other objects.

Selection handles offer various ways to enlarge, reduce, or change the looks of objects in LibreOffice Draw. You can use selection handles while in rotation mode to rotate objects either in place or around any point in a drawing.

Selection handles available when working with lines work a bit differently than those used when working with 2D objects.

LibreOffice Draw offers more than just basic shapes. Some of these objects have special selection handles in addition to the regular selection handles. You can use these special selection handles to manipulate the shape of these objects in various ways. Some of the special objects have a 3D appearance.

Many people have trouble positioning lines and other objects because they do not have a clear understanding of how lines are constructed in LibreOffice Draw. Two objects with the same dimensions may appear to have different sizes because of the width of their lines (borders). Lines of the same length may appear to have different lengths because of their line caps. Taking the time to understand how lines are constructed in LibreOffice Draw will save you time and frustration when you later try to position lines precisely.

Often, the quickest and easiest way to position objects in LibreOffice Draw is to simply drag the object to where you want it to appear. However, this is not a very precise method of positioning objects. Draw offers various ways to position objects with precision. Learning the various methods will allow you to choose the best method to use in a specific situation.

LibreOffice Draw provides snap guides as a way to precisely position objects individually or in relation to one another. You can use a variety of methods to display, position, and use snap guides. The better you understand these methods, the more efficiently you can use them.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to set up grids to help you position objects with precision. You can determine the distance between both major points and subdivisions. Once the grid has been established, Draw provides several ways to display the grid and snap objects to the grid.

LibreOffice Draw enables you to easily align two or more objects either vertically or horizontally. There are several ways to do this. Draw also provides several ways to align individual objects in relation to the page.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to set the height and width of individual objects. But, if you already have objects with different height or width settings, Draw provides ways to easily equalize the height or width of two or more objects.

When you add a new object to a LibreOffice Draw document, the new object is automatically placed in front of any object already in the document. Draw offers you various ways to change the arrangement of the objects in your document. In this way, you can determine which object is in front of what other object or objects.

LibreOffice Draw enables you to distribute three or more objects four different ways vertically as well as four different ways horizontally. These objects do not need to be aligned in order to be distributed.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to group various objects together so you can treat them as a single object. Grouped objects may later be ungrouped. Objects within groups may also be edited without ungrouping the objects first.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to combine two or more objects. Combining is not the same as grouping. Once combined, the individual objects from which the new object was created cannot be edited individually. Combining objects may have advantages over simply grouping objects depending on your final goal.

You don’t need to be an experienced artist of create images in LibreOffice Draw. If the basic shapes provided by Draw do not meet your needs, you may still be able to use these basic shapes to create new shapes that will meet your needs. You can do this by employing the Merge, Subtract, and Intersect features offered by LibreOffice Draw.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to connect two or more straight lines to make a longer line with various segments at different angles. You can also connect the beginning and end of this polyline to create a closed shape. That said, Draw provides several tools to achieve the same result more quickly and easily.

LibreOffice Draw offers two tools that allow you to draw continuous lines made up of various curves or a combination of curves and straight line segments. The results may form open lines or closed shapes with various edges that are either curved or straight. Once drawn, these line and shape may be altered by adding, deleting, or editing the points of the line or shape.

The Edit Points toolbar in LibreOffice Draw offers a variety of tools that allow you to change, move, add, or delete points of a complex curve. Other tools allow you to close the curve or split the curve if it is already closed.

Not all objects in LibreOffice Draw possess points that can be edited. Draw, however, allows you to convert shapes that do not have points to Bezier curves that do possess points that can be edited. Using this feature allows you much more flexibility in altering the looks of an object.

LibreOffice Draw offers the Freeform Line tool if you wish to draw a line as if you were using a pen or pencil. This tool is easiest to use if you have a stylus and tablet. The resulting freeform line is made up of points, so you can easily alter the looks of the line once it is created.

In LibreOffice Draw, the term line may be applied to an individual line segment, a string of several line segments, or the border of a shape such as a rectangle or ellipse. Draw offers the Line and Filling toolbar as one option for setting some of the attributes of a line. Before using this toolbar, you should learn both what it offers as well as its limitations.

The Properties deck of the Sidebar is the most useful area for setting line properties in LibreOffice Draw. You can set several properties directly in the Properties deck. You can also click on the More Options icon in the Properties deck to access the Line dialog which allows you to set even more line properties.

The Properties deck of the Sidebar is the most useful area for setting area properties in LibreOffice Draw. The number of property settings available in the Sidebar are extensive. Even more settings can be selected by clicking on the More Options icon in the Sidebar to open the Area dialog.

LibreOffice Draw provides many ways to apply colors to objects. These include various toolbars, menus, and Sidebar options. The more you learn about the different options available, the better equipped you will be to select the method that best suites your specific needs.

LibreOffice Draw provides various default color palettes from which you can select a very wide range of colors for your drawings. In addition, the Fill Color and Line Color dialogs offer ways to create you own colors.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to create your own custom palette to make it easier to find colors you frequently use in your drawings. The colors in the custom palette may be drawn from various palettes or be colors you have designed.

When selecting colors for a project, you should consider the medium in which the document will be viewed. Different color models should be used when designing projects to be viewed in different media. You should also consider what colors will look best if your document will be printed in grayscale.

While LibreOffice Draw is primarily a vector drawing application, there may be times when you want to use Draw to create a document with text as well as images. Draw does not possess all of the capabilities of high priced drawing programs, but it is capable of doing a wide variety of things with text. Your creative choices will increase as you learn more of what you can do with text in Draw.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to insert text anywhere in a document. You can employ various methods to insert this text. Being familiar with various methods will allow you to select the method best suited for the task at hand.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to insert text directly into certain objects. By inserting the text into an object, it becomes part of that object. It is important to understand what you can do with text inserted into an object as well as its limitations.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to use columns in text boxes or within other objects. To use columns effectively, you should understand both what you can do as well as challenges you may face. Knowing workarounds for such challenges can broaden your choices.

LibreOffice Draw allows you to apply a 3D effect to text. Once text has been converted to 3D, Draw allows you to alter its appearance in a wide variety of ways.

Fontwork objects allow you to easily add graphical text art to your documents in LibreOffice Draw. There are many ways of customizing Fontwork objects.

LibreOffice Draw generally applies attributes assigned in the Default Drawing Style of the Default Template to new objects drawn in the document. If you modify the attribute settings of the Default Drawing Style, these new attributes will be applied to any new objects you draw in the current document as well as any objects currently in the document if those attributes have not already been changed in another way. To avoid having to constantly change the attributes of the Default Drawing Style, you can create a new template with a different Default Drawing Style.

LibreOffice Draw provides styles other than the Default Drawing Style. After drawing a new object, you can apply one of these other styles to the object. By doing so, you can change various attributes at one time. Any attributes not changed will be applied using the attributes set by the style on which the current style has been based. Taking the time to learn how the hierarchy of styles works will make your work much more efficient.

If you frequently use the same colors or other attributes for objects in your Draw documents, you can save time by creating your own styles rather than simply changing the attributes of the styles LibreOffice Draw already provides. These new styles can then be saved in a new template to be used with new documents.

LibreOffice Draw does not offer all the features for drawing rectangles with rounded corners that some high-end graphic applications offer. But LibreOffice Draw can still fulfill that task. If you do not know what tools to use, however, you may become frustrated.

Unlike some high-end graphic applications that offer tools to easily adjust individual corners of rectangles, you must know how to use special methods from creating rectangles with varied corners when working with LibreOffice Draw.