112. Place Shapes on the Drawing Area  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 107 Create a New Drawing
 SEE ALSO 114 About Perfecting Shapes 115 Create a New Shape 117 About Manipulating Objects
Although you don't create anything fancy in this task, you do get a tour of Draw's shapes. You must be able to select from and place the various shapes available to you. Draw provides ovals, rectangles, polygons , and other shapes, including three-dimensional versions of most of these.  KEY TERM Polygons Multisided shapes. A square and rectangle are four-sided polygons, and a stop sign is an eight-sided polygon. Polygons don't have to be symmetrical.
Before getting complicated, you need to master the selection and placement of these shapes on your drawing area. Once you see how to place one shape on the drawing area, the rest are just as simple to do. TIP Use the ToolTips feature if you forget what a shape or tool does. For example, let your mouse pointer hover over any button on the Drawing toolbar and Draw pops up a ToolTip box that names the button (for example, the Lines and Arrows button).
 112. Place Shapes on the Drawing Area 
The steps in this task walk you through the list of shapes you can place on your drawings. | 1. | Select a Rectangle Tool
Click the Rectangle tool on the Drawing toolbar. Your mouse cursor changes to that shape and the Rectangle button changes to the shape you selected. Remember that you can only place the shape once on your drawing area before your mouse cursor will return to its normal pointer. To place several occurrences of the same shape on your drawing, double-click that shape's button before drawing.
| | 2. | Draw the Rectangle Shape
To draw the rectangle, click to place one end of the rectangle and drag to the opposite end to complete the shape. To create a perfect square, press Shift as you drag.
| | 3. | Select Ellipse Tool
Click the Ellipse tool on the Drawing toolbar to select the tool.
| | 4. | Draw the Ellipse To draw the ellipse, click to place one end of the ellipse and drag to the opposite end to complete the shape. To create a perfect circle, press Shift as you drag. TIPS Press Alt and drag with a shape tool to draw that shape from the center out. See 114 About Perfecting Shapes . Change the fill and line attributes of an object before or after you draw it by making selections from the Line and Filling toolbar. See 113 Draw Lines and 116 Fill an Object . Change aspects of a 3D object other than line color and fill (such as the angle and intensity of light on the object) by right-clicking the 3D object and choosing 3D Effects . Customize the Drawing toolbar to add rounded rectangles and various circle shapes with the buttons copied from the Rectangles and Circles and Ovals toolbars . | | 5. | Display the 3D Toolbar
Draw provides cubes, spheres, cylinders , cones, pyramids , and other shapes that come right out of the drawing at you. Choose View, Toolbar, 3D-Objects to display the 3D-Objects toolbar. Select a 3D tool such as Cone .
| | 6. | Draw the 3D Object Click and drag with the 3D tool to place that 3D shape onto your drawing area. A wireframe appears, marking the size of the foreground area of the future object. When the object is the right size , release the mouse button. Depending on the speed of your computer, the 3D shape will take slightly longer to draw than the other shapes because of the more complex computations taking place to render it. NOTE If the Contour mode option is checked in your View options (see 106 Set Draw Options ), the 3D shape will appear in the drawing area as a faint outline. You will see the object fully on the slide if the Pages pane is displayed, however. You must disable the Contour mode check box to see your 3D shape in the drawing area. (The shape will print either way.) This option is for users who work on slower computers whose screens take far too long to update every time they change a drawing that includes 3D shapes. | | 7. | Select Curve Tool The Curves toolbar, when you click the Drawing toolbar's Curve button to open it, include more tools than just curves. (For example, this the same Drawing toolbar button you clicked in a previous task to choose the Freeform tool.) From this toolbar, you can choose to draw a curve, a polygon, a 45-degree polygon, and filled versions of each. NOTE In 45-degree polygons, each edge is always a multiple of a 45-degree angle from the previous edge, as is always the case with squares and rectangles. | | 8. | Draw the Curve To draw a curve, click the Curve or Filled Curve tool to select it. Click on your drawing area where you want to start the curve. Drag your mouse over the span of the curve and release your mouse button after you've spanned the entire curve length. Your curve initially looks like a straight line, but now the fun begins. Unlike with most other tools, when you release the mouse button after drawing a curve, you have only designated part of the shape. You must now move your mouse to another location to begin developing the curve; as you move your mouse, the end of the line moves with your mouse, forming a curve to meet your mouse pointer. When the curve is positioned where you want it, double-click your mouse to anchor that end of the curve. NOTE After you've dragged your mouse to start the curve, don't drag the mouse again. Just move your mouse to adjust the curve as needed; the curve adjusts as you move the mouse. | | 9. | Select Polygon Tool
Once again, open the Curves toolbar by clicking the Drawing toolbar's Curves button. You can now draw a polygon.
| | 10. | Draw a Polygon
To draw a polygon, click either the Polygon or 45-Degree Polygon tool to select it. Click your drawing area where you want to start the multisided polygon. Drag your mouse in the direction of the polygon's first side. Release your mouse button to anchor that side; then drag your mouse once again to draw the next side. Keep drawing the polygon's sides. To end the polygon, double-click your mouse button. If you want to draw an enclosed polygon, finish as close as you can to the starting point of your polygon before you double-click to anchor the polygon into position.
| TIP If you're using the Polygon or Filled Polygon tool (and not the 45-Degree Polygon or 45-Degree Filled Polygon tool) you can still create 45-degree polygons; just hold the Shift key when dragging to create a new line that's angled at a multiple of 45-degrees from your current point.
|
