Flash Course - Drawing Geometrical shapes - 2

Ovals and Circles with the Oval tool

Outline thickness set to 2 pixels and color to black. Solid line style was used for the outline. The fill color was set to a light blue shade.

Rectangles and Squares

Outline Color: Red
Outline Thickness: 2 pixels
Outline Style: Solid
Fill Color: Yellow
The rounded rectangle has 10 pixels as radius.

Moving shapes

Once you have created a shape you can place it where ever you want. To move a shape (or any other object for that matter) from one place to another, you have to select it first using either the Arrow or the Lasso tool.

Shapes/objects can be selected by

• Clicking on it with the Arrow tool
• dragging a rectangle around the shape using the arrow tool OR
• drawing a loop with the lasso tool

Note: The lasso tool is commonly used for selecting odd shaped objects.

Rectangles and ovals consist of two parts, the fill and the outline. You can select these individually. Thus, to select only the fill, click inside the shape with the arrow tool. Oulines of circles and ovals can be selected by clicking on them. Selecting an outline of a rectangle or a square involves four clicks with the arrow tool, one for each side. (eight clicks in case of rounded rectangles).



Selecting a entire rectangle (outline and fill) using the arrow tool.



Selecting the outline of a circle and detaching it from the shape.

Sizing and rotating shapes

There are various ways to change the size and rotation of shapes in Flash. The simplest way to do this is to use the Arrow tool modifiers. When a shape is selected with the arrow tool, the modifiers are displayed below the toolbar. Here are two of them.
The scale modifier is employed for changing the size of the selected object. When it is activated, eight small square Handles are placed around the object. Dragging the corner handles increases or decreases the size of the object while dragging the central handles stretches the object in that direction.
The rotation modifier places eight small circular handles. The four in the corners, rotate the object while the central ones skew the object.
Flash makes it easy for you to work with these modifiers by changing the look of the mouse cursor depending upon the modifier you use.

(To resize or rotate odd shaped objects, select them using the lasso tool and then while the objects are still selected, click on the arrow tool to bring up the scale and rotate modifiers.)