Construction snapping for curves

Use construction snapping to help you build complicated shapes or intersections accurately and easily, giving you simple access to parallels, right angles, reflected and mirrored angles. Great for precise and symmetrical curve drawing, especially for technical drawing styles and typographic design.

Construction snapping

Construction snapping lets you snap a node's control handle to useful construction angles relative to the adjacent node and opposing control handle. You can also balance control handle lengths on adjacent nodes.

You can enable construction snapping via a single button which permits control handle snapping to various angles and alignments, i.e.

Control handle snapping behavior Example
Snap the leading control handle inline to adjacent nodeSnap the leading control handle inline to adjacent node
Snap 90° to inlineSnap 90deg to inline
Snap to reflected/mirrored angleSnap to reflected/mirrored angle
Snap to parallel control handleSnap to parallel control handle
Snap to 90° from parallel control handleSnap to 90deg from parallel control handle
Snap to logical triangleSnap to logical triangle

These snapping options operate independently of global snapping. They help avoid having to align control handles to grid or guide and offer additional accuracy and symmetry once nodes have been positioned using Curve snapping options.

Perform construction snapping To apply construction snapping:
  1. Select the Pen Tool or Node Tool.
  2. From the context toolbar's Snap section, enable Perform construction snapping.
  3. Drag a control handle such that it snaps to angles and alignments.

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