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draw point
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Point (tool)Place a free point on the canvas.
Menu: Draw > Point | Node: Point | In depth: Points
Click anywhere to drop a point. What kind of point you get depends on what was under the cursor, and the tool decides that for you rather than asking.
On empty canvas you get a free point: yours, draggable, answering to nothing. On a curve the point binds to that curve instead, and from then on it slides along it and follows it when the curve moves. On a crossing you get a real intersection point, tied to the two objects that cross, which keeps up when either of them changes. Three different things from the same click, and the difference matters later rather than now: a free point is one you move, and the other two move themselves.
It will not mint a second point on top of one that is already there. Click a crossing where a point is already sitting and you get that point, whatever it was built as. This is what saves compass work, where several circles and lines run through the same place and every pair of them is a crossing: without that rule, each pass would leave another point stacked on the last.
When several points really are stacked in one spot, the tool asks which one you mean rather than picking for you.
Two other cases worth knowing. Select two objects first and the point lands on their intersection, so you can name the crossing you want instead of hunting for it with the cursor. And a guide counts as a crossing where it cuts an object, but the point you get there is free rather than bound, because a guide is an annotation and nothing is ever built on it.
Alignment snaps sit between the two: below a real point or a crossing, above a guide. The position is worked out again from where you clicked rather than from where you hovered, so the point cannot land a hair off the line that was showing you where it would go.
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- In the node graph: Point - build the same point as a node.
- Points: what makes a point free, bound, or computed.
- Point: On Object: the command for binding a point to a curve deliberately.