Beside the usual visual feedback of the mouse cursor, different tools will employ visual aids to enhance the use of that tool. Entity Creation Tools, typically use all of the visual aids.

 

Preview Entities

Entity Creation tools incorporate a preview overlay. The preview overlay shows what an entity would look like if you were to complete the current process. Thus, as seen below, a line preview overlay shows you what the line would look like if you were to finalize it.

 

Cursor Icons

There are various cursor icons to give users a visual representation of which tool is currently the Active Tool. The cursor icon changes whenever active tool is changed. Apart from active tool cursor icons, there is also an invalid input cursor icon: . Whenever the input under cursor becomes invalid the cursor icon changes to the invalid input cursor .

 

Cursor Targets

There are two types of cursor target representation.

The round target cursor () is shown whenever the user moves the mouse before selecting any point. The square target cursor () is drawn whenever the user selects specifies a point on the drawing. In the example below, an arc is being drawn. The start and middle points have already been specified and are shown with the square target cursor . The end point is still not specified and is therefore shown as a round target cursor :

 

 

See Also:

       Grid