Sometimes the fastest way to capture an idea is to draw it. The palette's Draw category holds the drawing tools: Freehand for smooth strokes kept exactly as drawn, the Shape Pen for rough sketches that snap to real shapes, and the Polygon tool for clean point-by-point outlines (plus the Highlighter, Arrow and Line, each covered in its own guide). Everything they draw is a regular element you can move, resize, and style.
Looking for the marker? The Highlighter sits third in the Draw category, after the two pens: see Highlighter.
Draw is in the Diagram and Facilitate palettes (Facilitate's leaves out the Shape Pen and Polygon). Illustrate has no Draw category (the pens are still reachable from the search panel), and Draw mode replaces the palette with a whiteboard's own pens, which stay in your hand stroke after stroke.
Freehand and the Shape Pen
Both pens are gestural tools: pick one from the palette's Draw category (Freehand is P or 7, Shape Pen is 6) and the next drag on the canvas draws a stroke. A small mode banner tells you which pen is armed, with a Cancel action: Freehand's reads "Drag to draw", and the Shape Pen's says your rough shape will snap to the real one. The cursor swaps to a pen nib so you know you are in draw mode.
The only difference is what happens on release: Freehand keeps the stroke exactly as you drew it, and the Shape Pen matches it against real shapes.
Select Freehand or the Shape Pen from the palette's Draw category, or press its key.
Release to commit the stroke. It lands selected, and the pen puts itself down, so pick it again (or press its key) for the next stroke. A stray click with no drag does not create anything.
To put a pen down before drawing, press Escape, choose Cancel on the banner, or pick another tile. One ⌘Z takes back the last stroke.
On release, your raw points are smoothed into a clean, hand-drawn curve rather than a jagged polyline. With Freehand, if you release near where you started, the path closes into a custom shape and fills, which is the way to sketch a bespoke outline (on a desktop the banner reminds you: "release near the start to close").
Styling a sketch
A committed sketch is a regular boxed element. Its stroke colour follows the tab's theme so it reads as part of the diagram rather than a separate annotation layer, and a closed path fills with the theme's fill colour. From there you can:
- Move it, resize it (the path scales proportionally), rotate it, and lock it.
- Recolour its stroke and fill from the element's Colours controls.
- Apply the format painter, themes, and comments, exactly as with any shape.
The Polygon tool
The Polygon tool fills the gap between freehand sketching and the fixed shapes: clean, straight-edged outlines with exactly the corners you choose, for zones on an architecture diagram, floor plans, or any irregular region.
Click to place each point. A preview line follows your pointer from the last point you placed.
Click the start point (a snap ring appears when you are close) to close the outline into a
filled polygon, or double-click (or press Enter) to finish an open line at the last
point.
While placing points, Backspace removes the last point so you can walk a mistake back without starting over, and Escape clears the in-progress outline (press it again to put the tool down). An open line needs at least two points and a closed polygon three: until then, double-click and Enter do nothing, and clicking the start point just places another point. On a touch screen, taps place points just like clicks. A closed polygon fills with the theme's fill colour like any closed sketch; an open line stays stroke-only.
Shape recognition
Pick the Shape Pen instead of Freehand and your sketches are matched against real shapes on commit. A rough square becomes a square, a loop becomes a circle, and a straight stroke becomes a line. See Shape recognition for the details and which kinds are detected.
Nothing is remembered between strokes: Freehand always keeps what you drew and the Shape Pen always tries to convert it, so a stroke never behaves differently from the last one for reasons you cannot see.
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