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Draw Shapes: Rectangles, Ellipses, Polygons, and Stars

This page covers the creation and editing of various Primary Shapes:

  • Rectangles and squares
  • Ellipses (ovals) and circles
  • Triangles
  • Pentagons
  • Polygons with an adjustable number of sides (hexagons, by default)
  • Octagons
  • Stars
  • Dual Radius Stars

The products of these tools are often used to create the foundation of a design, either on their own, or combined with other objects to build up complexity.

These shapes are a special kind of vector object called Built-in Shapes that retain editable properties such as number of Sides for Polygons, or Corner Radius for Rectangles.

Shape Selection

Each Primary Shape is available in the Draw Shapes submenu of the Creation Toolbar or Tools Menu.

In the Creation Toolbar, click the arrow in the lower right corner of the icon, or click and hold anywhere on the icon, to open a submenu with the indivual tools.

Click one of the Primary Shape tools from the submenu to enable it.

By default, the Draw Shapes icon is set to the Rectangle tool, and clicking once anywhere on the icon (other than the arrow in the bottom right) without holding will enable Rectangle creation.

Once you've selected a different shape from the submenu, its icon will appear, and you'll be ready to create it. If you exit the Draw Shapes tool, you can click once to re-enable creation of the last-selected type of shape.

Selecting and creating a star from the draw shapes submenu

You can also enable Rectangle or Ellipse creation by hotkey:

  • Rectangle/Square: Ctrl / Cmd+R
  • Ellipse/Circle: Ctrl / Cmd+E

Shape Creation

Click, hold, and drag in your Workspace to create the selected Primary Shape.

Tip

Enable Switch to Select mode after drawing a shape in the Editor Settings tab of your Settings to immediately exit the Draw Shapes tool after creating a shape and enable Selection instead, allowing you to adjust the shape using the handles to Move, Size, Rotate, or Shear.

Switch to Select mode after drawing a shape switch in the Settings window

The behavior of shape creation changes if you use certain keyboard modifiers:

  • By default, the shape will begin at the first point you click, and extend from that point in both directions as you drag.

  • Holding Ctrl / Cmd will instead draw the shape from the center outward, which can be useful when aligning shapes to other parts of a design.

  • Holding Shift while dragging will make the shape into its regular form — the Rectangle tool will make a square, the Ellipse a circle, any of the polygon tools will make an equal-sided polygon, and the Stars will have sides of equal lengths (in the case of Dual Radius Stars, there will be two types of sides with matching lengths).

  • Hold both keys at once to combine their effects.

Creating a regular triangle from the center outward

Editing Primary Shapes

It's possible to adjust various aspects of an existing Primary Shape in the Shape Properties Window, or by using special control handles on the shape in your Workspace. The aspects vary between shape types but include dimensions, rotation, Corner Radius, and number of Sides. These control handles are available both immediately after creating the shape and when selecting a shape you've created previously.

Dimensions

You can change Width and Height in the Shape Properties Window and the Numeric Edits Toolbar.

Corner Radius — Rectangle Only

Corner Radius rounds out the corners by a given amount, which remains consistent even if the dimensions of the rectangle are later changed.

With a Rectangle selected, hold Ctrl / Cmd, and a blue control handle will appear. Drag the blue handle away from the corner to increase the radius of all four corners, and drag back toward the corner to decrease it. Dragging vertically creates a reversed radius, with a bite taken out of the corner.

You can also edit Corner Radius numerically in the Shape Properties Window.

corner radius

Sides — Polygons Only

Adjust the number of Sides of a Polygon in the Shape Properties Window to form different shapes — 3 will create a triangle, 6 will create a hexagon, 8 will create an octagon, and so on.

The Triangle, Pentagon, and Octagon tools all create polygons with the appropriate number of sides already set in the Shape Properties window, but each can be changed to a different type of Polygon after they've been created.

polygons of different sides

It's also possible to change the number of sides by holding Ctrl / Cmd and dragging the purple control handle that appears near the polygon. using control to change the sides

Points, Bulge, and Ratio — Stars Only

Points

The Points field controls the number of points on a Star.

For Dual Radius Stars, two sets of points are created, the Points field controls the amount of each individual set — in other words, the total number of points is two times the value entered in the Points field.

Points of a Star

Bulge

Applying a Bulge value creates an arc from the top of each point to its base. Accepted values range from 0 to 1.

Bulge of a Star

Ratio

Ratio defines the relationship between the distance from the Star's center to an outer point and to an inner corner, effectively determining the length and angle of star points.

For Dual Radius Stars, you can enter a separate value in Ratio and the Ratio2 fields to adjust the two sets of points individually.

Accepted values range from 0 to 1.

Ratio of a Star

Node-Editing a Primary Shape

Primary Shapes must be Converted to Paths to make editing their nodes possible. This process permanently removes the ability to edit a shape's dimensions, Corner Radius, or number of Sides in the Shape Properties Window.

For more help using LightBurn, please visit our forum to talk with LightBurn staff and users, or email support.