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draw segment
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Segment (tool)A finite edge between two points.
Menu: Draw > Segment | Node: Segment | In depth: Lines, rays & segments
Two clicks, one for each end. Or select two points that already exist and pick the tool: it reads the selection and joins them, no clicking required.
Each of those clicks goes through exactly what the Point tool does, which is more useful than it sounds. Click an existing point and the segment takes that point rather than a new one beside it. Click a crossing and it takes a real intersection point, so the end stays on the crossing when the things that cross it move. Click on a curve and the end binds to the curve and slides along it. A segment can be anchored into the construction as it is drawn, without a separate step to attach it afterward.
Finite means finite. A segment reaches from one end to the other and no further, so snapping and the Intersection Points node find crossings only between its ends. If you want the crossing out past an endpoint, draw a Line instead.
One deliberate exception, and it catches people: the Points: Intersection command reads a segment as the whole line it sits on. Two segments that do not physically meet still have an intersection, and that command will make it. Snapping does not, which is why the canvas and that command do not always agree about how many crossings exist.
The order of your clicks is the direction. A segment runs from the first end to the second, and that is not decoration. An offset and a weave both read direction to tell one side of a curve from the other, and a segment wired into Move's Vector is a displacement, so the click order is the way you travel. Reverse Direction flips it later if you got it the wrong way round.
A segment is also a length. Where an input wants a radius or a distance, handing it a segment hands it that segment's length, and the two then stay in step: stretch the segment and whatever read it follows.
Hold Shift on the second click to lock the segment to an angle. Constraining with Shift has the detail, including the useful part, that a locked segment still finds the crossing it runs into rather than stopping a hair short of it.
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- In the node graph: Segment - build the same segment as a node.
- Lines, rays & segments: which of the three to reach for.
- Reverse Direction: flip which way a drawn segment runs.