The pencil draws the way a hand does: press, move, let go. It is the fastest way to trace a curved bed, a winding path or a boundary off a photo — and the result can be tidied afterwards.
Draw a stroke
- Press P or click Pencil on the tool rail.
- Draw on the plan. On an iPad with an Apple Pencil, the pen draws and two fingers pan and zoom.
- Let go. The stroke becomes a shape with as many points as your hand made.
Fill or strip
While the pencil is armed, two options appear in the top bar:
- Fill — the stroke is closed into a filled area. Right for beds and lawns.
- Strip — the stroke stays a line and is given a strip width. Right for a path: draw its centre line and the width follows.
Tidy the outline
A freehand stroke has far more points than it needs. Select it and look at Geometry in the sidebar:
- Simplify drops points that lie within a tolerance of the line through their neighbours. Try 0.2 m first; the count of points updates as you change it, and the shape barely moves.
- Rebuild as N evenly-spaced points resamples the outline to a chosen number of points, spaced equally — the way to turn a scribble into a clean 12-point curve.
After either, press G to move the remaining points by hand.
Tips
- Draw slowly for detail and quickly for a rough shape; the pencil keeps what you did.
- The pencil is offered on the terrain, plants and paths bands — not on structures, which are set out with straight shapes.
Next
Draw lines and paths — open lines rather than filled areas.