Drawing Tools

Drawing tools allow you to point at specific elements in the PDF document, emphasize certain parts or attract attention of other authors to specific comments you made.

NOTE: Do not confuse drawing tools used for commenting with vector images. Unlike the latter, commenting drawing tools do not alter the actual content of the document and are not printed.

You can select a drawing tool using the toolbar or the Comments menu.

The following tools are available:

  • Arrow  – draw an arrow
  • Line  – draw a straight line
  • Rectangle  – draw a rectangle
  • Ellipse  – draw an ellipse
  • Pencil  – draw free-hand lines and drawings
  • Brush  – the same as above, but the trail is thicker

Inserting drawings to comment PDF documents

To insert a drawing, use the Comments > Drawing menu or click the corresponding button on the Comments toolbar. Clicking the down arrow on that button allows you to choose a drawing tool.

Click and hold the left mouse button to specify the first point of the drawing, then move the mouse to the second point and release the button. For the Pencil and Brush tools, drawing goes while you hold the button and ends when you release it.

To stop drawing, press Esc or click the right mouse button.

Adjusting drawing parameters

To modify a drawing, select the Hand Tool  by clicking its button on the toolbar or using the Tools > Hand Tool menu (Alt+6). Then click the drawing object you want to modify. If the Object Inspector panel is not visible, display it by clicking the Object Inspector button on the right panel or press Ctrl+F11.

In the Object Inspector window you can modify parameters of the selected drawing: adjust line width, color, opacity and also add a text comment to that object. The Status option sets the current status of the comment: Accepted, Cancelled, Completed, or Rejected.

Double-clicking the object pops up the balloon tooltip displaying the text comment and all the replies:

Editing Pencil and Brush drawings

When you use Pencil and Brush tools you can only adjust their parameters while drawing them. Use the Path section in the Object Inspector panel to do this:

When you finish drawings by pressing Esc or right-clicking, the Pencil and Brush objects are transformed to stamps and cannot be further edited as path lines. You can only edit the text of the comment and the color of the balloon tooltip:

You can read more about stamps here.