Leonardo Help

The Shape Tool Menu

The Shape Tool Menu is the second Tool Menu from the left in Leonardo. To access the Shape Tool Menu tap the tool and either hold your stylus down for one second or make an upward stroke with your stylus, like making a shift stroke.
You will see this:
The shape which is active is the one which is shown on the main toolbar. e.g. in this image the rectangle tool is active.

The Tools

A word about colours.

Shapes in Leonardo have two colours, the stroke (outline) colour and the fill colour. The stroke colour can be selected in the stroke colour palette selector. The fill colour can be selected in the fill colour palette selector.

Let's start at the top for fun shall we...

The Polygon Tool

This tool allows you to draw a filled polygon, any shape you like, go nuts. To use this tool tap the tool and then just start drawing. If you don't want the polygon to appear filled just set the fill colour to the same colour as the background colour of your image. You might end up with something like this:

The Isosceles Triangle Tool

Use this tool to draw triangles that have two sides of the same length. Just tap the tool and drag the stylus on the screen. You will see an outline of how your triangle will look while you are dragging. The direction in which your triangle's apex points depends on which way you drag the stylus first. If you drag sideways first then your triangle's apex will point to the side, if you drag vertically first then your triangle's apex will point to the top or the bottom. Give it a go and you will see what I mean. You will end up with something like this:

In this case my triangle points to the left as I dragged the stylus from left to right. To make the triangle point the other way drag from right to left. The same principle applies to up and down.

The Right Angle Triangle Tool

Use this tool to draw triangles that have a right angle. Just tap the tool and drag the stylus on the screen. You will see an outline of how your triangle will look while you are dragging. The same principle applies here as with the Isosceles triangle tool. Which way you drag first determines which way your triangle will be oriented. In this case I dragged from top left to bottom right diagonally. You will end up with something like this:

The Square Tool

Pretty self explanatory really... Just tap the square tool and drag the stylus across the screen. Presto! A beautiful perfect square every time. The only thing worth mentioning here is that wherever you start dragging will be on one corner of your square.

The Rectangle Tool

Same as the abovementioned square tool, except it draws rectangles. :) You will see an outline of how your rectangle will look while you are dragging. And just like the square tool, wherever you start dragging will be on one corner of your rectangle.

The Circle Tool

Just tap the circle tool and drag the stylus across the screen . You will see an outline of how your circle will look while you are dragging. Wherever you start dragging will be the centre point of your circle.You cannot add or remove points with circles... or ellipses or arcs. This is for the very simple reason that a circle (and hence an ellipse or an arc) are not made up of points, per se. They are made up of an origin and a radius. All other shapes are defined by a set of points, basically a point for each corner. Circles don't have corners, so they don't have points.

The Ellipse Tool

Same as the abovementioned circle tool. Wherever you start dragging will be the centre point of your ellipse.

The next scintillating episode is The Text Tool Menu.