Canvas – Drawing and Editing

For high-level information about the SCALGO Live Canvas, please consult the product page. Some of the topics on this page are also referenced in the canvas getting started video.

The canvas toolbar

The canvas toolbar allows you to draw on your canvas, and edit existing objects.

The canvas tool bar with tools in order from left to right: select, text box, point, line, area, eraser and background picker.

The available tools include:

Selection

The selection tool is used for selecting and modifying existing canvas features.

  • You can move individual vertices around (not supported for all canvas objects) as well as change various style options.
  • You can translate the entire object by pressing the Shift button on your keyboard while dragging the feature with the left mouse button.
  • When you translate and move vertices or objects that are snapped with another object, the snapped feature will move as well. To disable this, hold down the CTRL button on the keyboard while performing the modification.

It is possible to select multiple features at the same time. You can do this by hitting CTRL and dragging a box around the features to select. If you use CTRL and SHIFT at the same time, you will add to the current selection instead of making a new one. You can also use CTRL and then click individual features to add them to the selection one at a time. 

Text box

Use this tool to create a text box on your canvas. 

Point

You can create points in various styles and colors. 

Line

With the line tool you can create a polygonal line object on your canvas. If you hold down the Shift button, you can draw a free-form line.

Two lines. The yellow line to the left was drawn in free-form mode.

We support various style options for the lines as well. For instance, you can make them dashed or dotted, and add arrows.

Polygon

With the polygon tool you can create  polygonal objects on your canvas. If you hold down the Shift button, you can draw a free-form polygonal boundary.

Two polygons. The yellow polygon to the right was drawn in free-form mode.

Background picker

The background tool allows you to change the canvas opacity and the visibility of your canvas against the regular map. This makes it easier to emphasize or de-emphasize the canvas relative to the regular SCALGO Live layers. 

The background options in the canvas toolbar.

Various SCALGO Live addons may insert additional tools into the canvas toolbar.

Other ways of creating objects

You can easily create objects by importing your own vector data and you can also import data directly from SCALGO Live analyses and layers. You can read more about this in the import section of the documentation.