More Drawing Tools

Harmony offers a wide variety of useful tools to optimize your drawings and work more efficiently; tools such as Group, Arrange, and the animation disk to rotate your workspace.

Arrange
Convert Brush Strokes to Pencil Lines
Pencil Lines to Brush Strokes
Strokes to Pencil Lines
Optimize
Grid
Group/Ungroup
Hand
Rotate View

Arrange

The different Arrange options let you reorder drawing objects inside a single layer in the Drawing or Camera view.

Name Button Description Access Method
Bring to Front Moves the selected art to the front (on top).

From the top menu, select Drawing > Arrange > Bring to Front.

Press Ctrl + Shift + PgUp (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + Shift + PgUp (Mac OS X).

Bring Forward Moves the selected art one level forward (closer to the front).

From the top menu, select Drawing > Arrange > Bring Forward.

Press Ctrl + PgUp (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + PgUp (Mac OS X).

Send Backward Moves the selected art one level lower (behind).

From the top menu, select Drawing > Arrange > Send Backward.

Press Ctrl + PgDown (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + PgDown (Mac OS X).

Send to Back

Moves the selected art behind everything (bottom / back).

From the top menu, select Drawing > Arrange > Send to Back.

Press Ctrl + Shift + PgDown (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + Shift + PgDown (Mac OS X).

Convert Brush Strokes to Pencil Lines

The Brushes Strokes to Pencil Lines operation converts selected contour strokes into centreline pencil strokes. The brush stroke thickness will be lost.

Pencil Lines to Brush Strokes

The Pencil Lines to Brush Strokes operation converts the selected centreline pencil strokes into contour strokes brush lines.

Strokes to Pencil Lines

The Strokes to Pencil Lines operation converts the selected invisible line to a pencil line.

Optimize

The Optimize command reduces the number of layers, such as overlapping brush strokes, in the selected drawing objects. Drawing objects will only be flattened and optimized if the selected objects do not change the appearance of the final image when they are merged.

For example, if you have selected a number of partially transparent objects, which you layered to create an additive colour effect, the selected transparent drawing objects will not be merged. This is because merging the transparent drawing objects will cause them to lose the effect of the layered transparent colours.

Grid

Field Chart

Use the Show Grid option to display a grid in the Drawing or Camera views.

Name Button Description Keyboard Shortcut

Show Grid

 

Displays the grid.

View > Grid > Show Grid

Press Ctrl + ' (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + ' (Mac OS X).

Grid Outline Only   Displays the outline of the grid only.

View > Grid > Grid Outline Only

Square

Displays a standard square grid.

View > Grid > Square

12 Field Grid

Displays a 12-field size grid.

View > Grid > 12 Field Grid

16 Field Grid

Displays a 16-field size grid.

View > Grid > 16 Field Grid

Underlay

Displays the grid under the drawing elements. View > Grid > Underlay

Overlay

Displays the grid over the drawing elements. View > Grid > Overlay

Group/Ungroup

Use the Group option to group selected drawing objects. This can help in the selection, repositioning, re-scaling and other transformations to be applied to multiple objects of a drawing.

From the top menu, select Edit > Group > Group or Edit > Group > Ungroup.
From the Camera or Drawing view menu, select Edit > Group > Group or Edit > Group > Ungroup.
Press Ctrl + G and Ctrl + Shift + G (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + G and ⌘ + Shift + G (Mac OS X).

Hand

Use the Hand tool to pan through the Drawing or Camera view.

In the Tools toolbar, select the Hand tool, click in the Drawing or Camera view and drag.
You can also Hold down the Spacebar, click in the Drawing or Camera view and move your mouse in the direction you want to pan the view.

Rotate View

The Rotate View tool lets you rotate the Drawing or Camera view, the same way as you would do with a real animation disc. This tool can also be used in the Perspective view.

Rotary Table