Rulers

You may add rulers to the drawing window. They indicate the coordinates of the drawing as they appear on the printed page or display window. The rulers also contain tick indicators that mark the vertices of all selected graphics.

The stepper control in the upper left corner of the ruler is used to change the intervals of the intermediate tick marks. This makes it easy to click and view the tick format until the best one is found. These formats may also be selected by name on a popup menu on the Ruler Style panel.

Use the "Show Rulers" command near the bottom of the Tools Menu to turn rulers on or off. The units used on the rulers are selected on the Scale parameter panel.

If "Multiple Scales"are in use for the drawing (using the Independent Layers check box on the Scale parameter panel) the ruler shown for the drawing reflects the scale of the Active Layer, which is defined using the Layers Inspector.

The origin, the point on the drawing (paper) where both axes are zero, is defined on the Scale parameter panel. The origin may be moved just by clicking and dragging a ruler (Horizontal or Vertical). This will move the origin, the ruler and all graphics on the drawing. Moving the origin doesn't move graphics, their coordinates hold constant. It does change where the graphics are drawn on the page or pages of a drawing. For more information on this topic refer to the Page Layout documentation.

To move the origin but not graphics on the drawing, hold down the Apple Cmd key then click and drag the desired ruler.

Tick marks are shown with the same Fill Color as the graphic. You cannot move a graphic or resize a graphic by moving the tick mark. It may appear that the graphic is being moved, but actually all graphics are moving with the ruler and origin.

The Font (size, style, ...) may be accessed and changed by double clicking first (left most) label on the X axis.

The appearance including, size, color, background, and several other characteristics of the rulers may be changed using the Ruler Style parameter panel.