Staying connected in Google drawings

Ever since we launched the Google drawings, the most requested feature has been shape connectors. Well today, they’re here.

From now on, when you add a new line in a Google drawing, you can connect that line directly to a shape (old lines will need to be replaced with new lines). Think of connectors as the glue that keeps your drawings together: no matter how much you move around or rotate your shapes, the lines attached to them will stretch so that the shapes stay connected.

To use a connector, start drawing a line and move your cursor near an existing shape. You’ll see small red dots, showing you the points on the shape that you can connect to. Release your mouse when you’re hovering over a point, to connect the line to that point.

Connectors are especially helpful for complex drawings with lots of shapes and lines.


We’re hoping connectors will make drawing online just a little bit easier. Let us know what you think in the comments.

New this week in Docs: Connectors, hidden controls, and more upload options

From connectors in drawings to hidden controls, we have a lot of updates to share this week:

Connectors in drawings
Since we launched Google drawings in April, the most requested feature has been line connectors. Starting today, all new lines can connect to shapes making it easier to create flowcharts and complex diagrams.

Insert images directly from Picasa
If you’ve got images stored in your Picasa web albums, the image dialog will let you insert those images directly into documents and drawings.



Hidden controls
A couple weeks ago, we introduced compact controls to the document editor. This week we’re bringing compact controls to the drawing editor as well. We also added a new feature to both documents and drawings: hidden controls. Choosing View -> Hide controls will hide the title bar, menu bar, and toolbar. Once you’ve hidden the controls, you can always press Esc to make them appear again.

WMF upload
We now support uploading WMF (Windows Metafile) files and converting them into Google drawings.

Stay tuned for in-depth posts throughout the rest of the week.

Writing a campaign speech with Google Docs

A few months ago, my colleague Julia and I were at a technology conference for educators. Teachers were very enthusiastic when we demonstrated working together on documents at the same time and were really excited about how they could use it in their classrooms. What surprised us though, was how many of our favorite features - like working together at the same time - were brand new to them.

We knew we wanted to share that same excitement with even more people. Inspired by the Search Stories videos, we set off to tell a story using Google Docs. The result is this video:



We hope you enjoy seeing some of the cool features Google Docs offers in action. And if you think your friends would like it, show it to them too!

Drawing out ideas in documents

Have you recently toiled over instructions to assemble furniture? Now imagine the agony if you had no illustrations to fall back on. What’s the best way to teach kids about nutrition without a food pyramid?

Sometimes when working with text you realize that words can only articulate so much. And that’s why we have drawings in Google documents. Drawings can be useful for things like diagramming processes in a flowchart or clearly articulating the relationship between a groups of ideas.


To get started, select the Drawing option from the Insert menu:


Now, you’ll see the drawing editor.


When creating a drawing for a document, the shapes menu can be particularly helpful. From thought bubbles to arrows to a smiley-face, this menu can help you whip up something playful or professional in no time.


As with images, you can resize a drawing and even mark it as inline or fixed within your document.
You can also copy an existing Google drawing into a document. To do that, first select the relevant shapes in your original drawing, and then copy them using the Web clipboard.


In your document, open the Web clipboard and paste the drawing into your document.


Give it a test drive and let us know what you think in the comments.

A new curve tool for drawings

Sometimes scribbles just don’t cut it and you need more powerful curve tools in Google drawings. Well, we’ve just released a tool that does just that, based on cardinal splines.

The new curves can be left open or closed, and can be filled or unfilled. You can also adjust points on the curve after drawing it.


Most importantly, this tool is fun. You can freehand a nice logo, like this:


Or make vector art from your photographs, like this:


For the heavy scribble users out there, the curve tool replaces the scribble tool in the icon bar, but the original hasn’t disappeared. You can now find the scribble tool under the shapes icon. It’s also available via Insert > Scribble.


We’re excited to see what you can make with the new curve tool. Please share your work in the template gallery, and let us know what other design tools you’d like to see in drawings on the forums.

Table resizing and other niceties in documents

Want to add “Googlers” to your document dictionary? (It is a real word, you know...) Need to resize columns and rows in a table? Want to get rid of that pesky ruler permanently? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to copy your Google drawing into your documents? You can with a few new small updates to Google documents.

Add words to your dictionary

You can add words to the spellchecking dictionary by right-clicking on any word that’s marked as misspelled and selecting Add to dictionary.


Drag to resize table columns and rows

We just made it much easier to change the sizes of columns and rows in tables. Just click and hold on any of the row dividing lines and drag the line to a different location to adjust the row height or column width.

Persistent show/hide ruler setting

If you want to hide the ruler at the top of documents, uncheck the Show ruler option from the View menu and the setting will now apply to all of your documents.


Copying from web clipboard

Lastly, we added the ability to copy an existing Google drawing into a document. From inside drawings click on the web clipboard icon and select Copy entire drawing to web clipboard.


Then, when you’re in your document, you can click on the web clipboard icon again and choose to paste the drawing.

Let us know what you think in the forums.

A zoom tool and more in drawings

In a visual application like Google drawings, we know the details count, which is why we’re excited to announce another batch of features and shortcuts that will help you refine your drawings. Create a drawing to check them out.

Zoom improvements
We’ve added several new and simple ways to zoom in and out within a drawing: a zoom tool on the toolbar; the ability to draw a rectangle around an area to zoom; zoom levels to the View menu; and keyboard shortcuts to zoom in (Ctrl Shift → or Cmd Shift → on a Mac) and zoom out (Ctrl Shift ← or Cmd Shift ← on a Mac).


Pie and arc drawing improvements
Once you’ve selected the pie or arc shape, drag from the center point, then release to set the radius, move your mouse along the circumference to set the angle, then click when you’re done. Hint - you can hold shift during step 2 to constrain your arc to 15 degree increments.

You can also select Edit > Change Shape to toggle between a pie shape and arc shape.


Duplicate while rotating and resizing
You may already know that if you hold Control (or Command on a Mac) you can make a copy of an object as you drag it. Well, we have extended the Control/Command modifier to duplicate objects while you resize and rotate objects too, which makes it easy to make both concentric and radial diagrams.

Hint: duplicating while resizing works better if you resize from large to small, since each new object gets placed on top.


New line decoration controls
Now you can change the style of the cap used at the end of your lines from the default butt cap to use square caps or round caps (see below).


You can also change the appearance of line joins within your polylines and shapes from the default round join to use miter joins or bevel joins. These options are available via Format > Line decorations.


Let us know what you think in the forums.

A Guide to Getting Started with Google drawings

Last year we published Getting Started Guides for spreadsheets, documents, and presentations -- because using a product for the first time can sometimes be challenging. People have found these very helpful, so we’ve created a Getting Started Guide for drawings.

This guide covers the basics about Google drawings and gives you all the information you need to start creating, editing, formatting, and sharing your drawings. It also includes some tips and tricks about features you may not know too much about. If you already use Google presentations, but aren't so familiar with drawings, you can read this guide to learn, for example, how to embed your drawing into a presentation.

Don't forget to share this link with your family, friends, and coworkers who may want to get started with Google drawings.

After you're finished reviewing the guide, check our Help Center for more information. And if you have questions or want to share your suggestions and comments, visit our product ideas page.

New features for drawings

We'd like to let you know about a few new features we’ve recently added to drawings. Go create a drawing to check them out.

Center on page
While it’s possible to use alignment guides to center an object or group of objects on the page, now you can center an object on the page quickly using the context menu or Format menu.

Aspect-constrained canvas re-size
You’ll often want to just shrink or expand your working canvas size without changing the aspect ratio, which is 4 x 3 by default. So, now you can hold shift while you re-size the canvas to preserve its current aspect ratio.


Thumbnails for drawings in the doc list
When you search for drawings it’s really helpful to see the results. Now you can use the thumbnail view in your doc list to quickly preview all of the drawings in the results of your search.


Full text search for drawings
Some drawings may also contain text that you may want to search for. Now we let you search through all of the text in your drawings - within a text box, shape, or word art - so that when you search for that text from your private docs list, your drawing will show up in the results.



Pop-up keyboard shortcut help
We know there are a lot of tricky little keyboard modifiers you need to know about to use some of the most powerful features of drawings. Now these shortcuts be easily inspected at a glance by hitting Control / or Command / on a Mac which has the distinction of being the last keyboard shortcut you ever need to memorize. Kudos to the Gmail team for inspiring this design.


Let us know what you think in the forums.

Tips & Tricks: Enhancing your presentations with Google drawings

In April the we launched the new Google drawings editor. I use Google drawings to enhance my Google presentations by building dynamic and informative images in drawings and copying them over to the presentation I’m making. Read on for some tips on how to use drawings to make a better presentation.

Expressing ideas using diagrams from the template gallery
Google recently launched the template gallery for drawings. When I need to express an idea with a diagram, this is a great first place to look. Diagrams can express relationships, organizations, processes, and other ideas that are difficult to show in words.

For more information on adding, searching for, and rating templates, check out our blog post on the template gallery.

Giving your text boxes some style
Sometimes when I need to get a point across, I find it’s easier to do when I surround it with color. With Google drawings, I encapsulate my thoughts in any number of shapes. Drawings lets me add text to pretty much any shape by double clicking on the shape.

After I type text into the box, I use the formatting palette to make the point stand out.

Enhancing images to highlight a point
Every so often I need to include a chart, screenshot, or image and highlight a specific point that I want to discuss. Using drawings, I add pointers and boxes to overlay a chart, screenshot, or image in order to draw the viewers eye to what I’d like to call out.

To do this I use the Insert > Image option and load whatever image I want to work with onto my canvas.
Then I use either the arrow line or a shape to highlight my point. To overlay shapes, I set the background color to transparent so that the image below is still visible.

Copying my drawing into a presentation
Once I’ve finished using drawings to create my visuals, I copy it onto a slide in my presentation. To do this, I go to the Web Clipboard in my drawing and select Copy entire drawing to web clipboard.

Once the drawing is in my web clipboard, I go to my presentation and select the slide that I want to drop my drawing into. Then, I click on the Web Clipboard icon and select the drawing from the list.


Once it’s on the slide I can re-size it to the best fit. I can even make edits to the drawing from within the presentation, by double clicking on the drawing and opening the embedded drawing editor.