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Learn how to use shapes and vectors within your document.
You can see these and more features at the Bohemian Coding Features Page
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Line Tool used to draw lines in your documents
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Arrow Tool used like the line tool, but will have an arrow applied to the end point
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Rectangle Tool is used frequently and can be accessed by pressing the R key
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Oval Tool behaves the same way as the Rectangle Tool and can be accessed by pressing the O key
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Most layers you create in Sketch will be
made up of shapes, and
0:00
we now know these can be found in the
Insert menu in the tool bar.
0:03
There you will find a choice of eight
shapes to choose from.
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So, let's take a brief look at the most
commonly used ones.
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The line tool can be used to draw lines on
the document.
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Once selected, just click and drag to
create your line.
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This will draw a path on the canvas, which
has a border whose thickness you can
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adjust and not a fill as there is no area
to fill.
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The Arrow tool works the same way as the
Line tool but
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will have an arrow applied to the endpoint
where you release your mouse's click.
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Here, you can use a fill to define the
color of the arrow's head.
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Next is the rectangle tool, which you've
seen a couple of times already.
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Because this is a shape that is frequently
used in Sketch, it has its own shortcut.
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Just press r, and you can see the cursor
has changed to include a little square.
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When you click and
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drag to create a shape in your canvas you
can hold down the shift key to turn
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the rectangle into a perfect square by
making the height the same as the width.
1:11
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Whilst your rectangle is selected you can
alter the corner radius on the shape
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to give it some nice rounded corners in
the Inspector.
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Just under the Rotate and Flip options.
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The oval tool, which we've also seen
before,
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behaves the exact same way as the
rectangle tool.
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The shortcut for this shape is simply just
the O key.
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Again, hold shift to turn the oval into a
circle.
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Rounded simply creates a rounded rectangle
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whose radius you can adjust in the
Inspector like the rectangles.
1:54
Both are included in Sketch as you may
want to quickly draw
1:59
either options without having to adjust
them later.
2:03
This style and polygon tools will add
simple shapes to the canvas.
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But can be quite flexible due to the
options that come with it.
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In the Inspector, you can add or remove
points for both.
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As well as adjusting the radius on the
star,
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which will allow you to completely alter
the original shape.
2:21
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A good way to make the more complex
shapes, is to use the simpler,
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basic shapes as building blocks, using
something called Boolean Operations.
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There are four different types of
operations you can perform.
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And the easiest way to explain them is by
seeing them in action.
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To start I'll just scroll the shapes off
and create a circle using the oval tool.
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So I'll press O and then hold down shift
when I click and drag to make it a circle.
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I'll then duplicate it by pressing command
and D.
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I'll just drag the copy to the side, just
here, and quickly adjust their colors.
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Now we have two shapes.
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I'll make sure both of them are selected.
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You can now see the Boolean operations
icons in the toolbar are now active.
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Meaning we can join them.
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Starting off with union, we can see two
things that happen when you click it.
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You can see the color of one of these
ovals has changed and
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now the two layers have become one.
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And the arrow has appeared next to the
layer's name.
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So if we click to expand it,
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we can view the two oval layers as sub
paths of this shape.
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We can select any of these sub-paths and
move them around, and
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they will still be connected.
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When the join type is union, they don't
need to overlap each other.
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But for every other type, they do.
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So with a sub par selected in a layer, we
can change the operation type.
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Click on the icon on the right of the
layer list and when we select subtract
4:19
from the menu, it will cut the sub path
out of the ones that lie underneath it.
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If we intersect this sub path the fill is
in the area between the two shapes.
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It kind of gives you this Venn diagram
like effect.
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And if we change the join type to
different ,you'll
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see the overlapping part of these two
layers is now cut out.
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You can add more layers to an existing
layer with Boolean operations
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applied by selecting both and performing
an operation.
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Sub path within a layer, can have multiple
operations.
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Such as a union on top of a sub path
that's being subtracted.
5:02
Just like any other layers, their order is
also important.
5:07
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