The Tool Palette

The Tool Palette

The tool palette is the column of mode buttons (top-right by default). Click a button — or press its shortcut — to switch the active tool. Right-clicking a tool button opens that tool's settings (where it has any).

In every tool except Pan/Zoom, right-clicking the field opens a context menu (for the selected traces, or for the field). The mouse wheel changes sections, and middle-click pans, regardless of the active tool.

The palette has eleven tools:

Pointer (P)

Selects and moves traces, z-trace points, and flags.

• Click a trace to select/deselect it.
• Click and drag on empty space to draw a selection region. By default this is a freehand lasso that selects only fully-enclosed traces; right-click the Pointer button to switch the region shape (Rectangle/Lasso) and whether it selects all touched traces or only completely encircled ones.
• Click and drag a selected trace to move all selected items together.

Pan/Zoom (Z)

• Drag with the left button to pan.
• Drag up/down with the right button to zoom.

(Pan and zoom are also available in any tool via middle-click and Ctrl+wheel.)

Knife (K)

Slices a selected trace along a freehand line.

• Select the trace(s) to cut first (they must share one object name and be all open or all closed), then drag the knife across them.
• Resulting pieces smaller than a threshold percentage of the original are discarded — right-click the Knife button to set % original trace (default 1.0) and to enable Smooth cuts.

Scissors

Re-traces an existing trace. Click a trace and the tool reopens it as a live line starting at the clicked point, so you can re-draw it; right-click to finish. Useful for fixing part of a contour without redrawing the whole thing. (Scissors has no default keyboard shortcut.)

Closed Trace (C) and Open Trace (O)

Draw new traces with the current trace-palette preset's name and color. Closed Trace makes outlines that enclose area; Open Trace makes curves with length only.

Right-click either button to choose the drawing mode:

• Scribble — hold and drag to draw freehand; release to finish.
• Poly — click to place each vertex; right-click to finish; Backspace removes the last point.
• Combo (default) — a quick click starts a poly/clicked line; click-and-drag scribbles.

For Closed Trace you can also pick a fixed shape — freehand Trace, Rectangle, or Ellipse (drag to size) — and optionally auto-merge new traces into selected same-named traces, or apply a rolling-average smooth while scribbling.

Stamp (S)

Places a copy of the current trace-palette preset's shape at a fixed size.

• Click to drop one stamp centered on the cursor at the preset's radius.
• Click and drag to set the radius for that stamp (diameter = drag distance).

The stamp shape and its radius come from the selected trace-palette button (set them by right-clicking that button — see The trace palette).

Grid (G)

Replicates the current preset into a rectangular array — useful for stereology sampling. Click to place the grid. Right-click the Grid button to set the element size, spacing, and number of columns/rows. With Sampling frame enabled (the default), each cell is drawn as a counting frame (a red exclusion line and a green inclusion line) rather than a copy of the preset.

Flag (F)

Drops a labeled marker (a ⚑ glyph) at the clicked point. Click to place a flag and fill in its name, color, and an optional comment. Right-click the Flag button to set the default name/color, the flag size, and which flags are shown: All flags, Only unresolved flags (the default), or No flags.

Flags are selected and moved with the Pointer tool; right-clicking a flag opens its dialog, where you can edit its name/color, add comments, and mark it Resolved. All flags in the series are listed in the Flag list.

Host (Q)

Sets host (parent) relationships between objects. Click a first trace (the object that will be hosted), then click a second trace (its host); a line is drawn between them while you choose. Right-click to cancel. An object can't host itself, and two objects can't host each other. Hosts also appear as a column in the object list and can be set from the object list's context menu.

Z-trace tool

Creates a z-trace — a curve through the stack. Select the tool, then click points (changing sections between clicks as needed with the mouse wheel); right-click to finish. The new z-trace takes the current preset's name and color. (This tool is selected from the palette; it has no default keyboard shortcut.)

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