Sans-serif fonts such as Bitstream Vera Sans are good for diagrams ( Arial is a good alternative for Windows users) The character and paragraph menus change the appearance of an item's text and its text-layout, respectively, while the Text menu is used to align the text within its parent object.

The text-formatting menus (font, size, colour) will become visible, and it's possible to combine several different text-styles in the same object. A cursor will appear and you can type text. To add text to any object, just double-click on it. The mousepointer will change to a + symbol to indicate that you're adding to the list of selected items.

You can also select a number of objects simultaneously by holding down shift and clicking on each object. Select a group of objects, right-click on one, and use Group or Ungroup from the menu. When your diagrams get more complicated, it can be useful to create groups of objects, which can be cut, pasted, and moved around as if they were one item.

Click on the 'paint can' icon to the left of that list to see the full range of styles available, or right-click on the object and select Area properties.įile:Openoffice draw fill.png Joining Up A range of colours, textures, and patterns are available, each of which may be modified with various types of transparency. To change the background colour of a shape, simply use the toolbar at the top of the window. To rotate, or distort shapes, try using the transform tools toolbox. Notice the green little boxes at the 'corners' of the shape, these are called handles and allow you to resize the shape bigger or smaller.

Openoffice drawing tools