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mouse_modifiers
Holding a key while you drag changes what the drag does — it constrains a shape to a square, frees an item from the grid, resizes from the centre, snaps a rotation to 15°, or moves an element's label instead of the element.
Almost none of this is visible in the interface. Two of them appear in the status bar while you are already dragging; the rest are not written down anywhere. This page is the list.
Keyboard-only control is the companion page and covers the opposite problem — driving QElectroTech without a mouse at all.
Ctrl is not handled separately by each tool. It is built into the grid function itself, so it works anywhere a position is snapped: placing an element, drawing a shape, dragging an item, moving a handle.
Held down, positions round to the nearest pixel instead of the nearest grid square. It is fine positioning, not unlimited freedom — you still land on whole coordinates.
Two things follow that are easy to trip over:
- Ctrl also toggles selection when you click an item. A Ctrl+click adds or removes that item from the selection; Ctrl held during a drag frees it from the grid. Same key, two jobs, decided by whether you moved.
- Ctrl+Shift is not available as a modifier of your own. The sheet view reserves that combination for its own mode switch, so a Ctrl+Shift drag does not behave like "Ctrl and Shift at once" everywhere.
| You drag | Plain | With a modifier |
|---|---|---|
| An element, image or shape | snaps to the grid | Ctrl — fine positioning |
| A free text field | snaps to the text grid | Ctrl — fine positioning |
| A conductor's text | snaps to the text grid | Ctrl — fine positioning |
| An element's own text (label, reference, information field) | moves the whole element | Shift — moves the text alone, snapped to the text grid; release Shift and hold Ctrl for fine positioning |
| A group of element texts | snaps to the text grid | Ctrl — fine positioning |
The Shift row is the one people ask about. Clicking an element's label and dragging moves the element, because the label hands the event to its parent. Hold Shift as you press, and the label moves on its own.
Hovering over an element's text says so too: the tooltip shows the text, then Hold Shift and drag to move this text on its own in the French interface, Hold Shift and drag to move this text on its own in the English one. Interfaces in other languages still show the older, shorter <Shift> to move.
While you drag an element's text, the status bar names the text grid in use and repeats the hint: release Shift, hold Ctrl to place freely. Ctrl and Shift together are reserved by the sheet view (§1).
Texts do not have to snap to the full sheet grid. Display ▸ Text grid, the Textes 1:1 button on the Display toolbar, and Grid for texts moved with the mouse in Configure QElectroTech ▸ General ▸ Grid + Keyboard all set the same choice:
| Choice | A dragged text snaps to |
|---|---|
| 1:1 (default) | the sheet grid, as symbols do |
| 1:2, 1:5, 1:10 | a half, a fifth or a tenth of a grid step |
| Disabled | the nearest unit, as with Ctrl |
Every step divides the sheet grid exactly, so texts on different symbols still line up with each other. The choice is a preference of your installation, not of the project: nothing in a saved file changes. The finer grid is not drawn on the sheet.
Before September 2026 an element's own text did not snap at all, so most labels in older projects sit off the grid. The first drag of such a label pulls it onto the text grid, by at most half a step.
While dragging out a rectangle or an ellipse:
| Hold | Result |
|---|---|
| nothing | corner to corner, snapped to the grid |
| Shift | a perfect square or circle — the longer side wins |
| Ctrl | drawn from the centre outwards, and off the grid |
| Ctrl+Shift | a centred square or circle |
Shift has no effect on lines, polygons or paths — only on rectangles and ellipses.
With the Arc tool (PR #1202), Shift makes a true half circle and Ctrl only takes the clicks off the grid — there is no centre-anchored arc. See Arcs and curved wires.
Whether the shape is centre-anchored is decided at the first click, not re-checked while you drag. Letting go of Ctrl halfway through does not snap the shape back to corner-anchored; that is deliberate, so a tired hand does not undo a decision you already made.
Select a shape or an image and drag one of its handles.
| Handle | Hold | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Resize | Ctrl | resize symmetrically about the centre instead of the opposite corner |
| Resize | Shift | keep the proportions — for an image, its original aspect ratio, not a forced square |
| Resize corner (shapes) | Alt | detach that corner, turning a rectangle or ellipse into a polygon you can reshape freely. Edge handles ignore Alt |
| Rotate | Shift | snap the angle to 15° steps |
| Skew | Shift | snap the skew to 15° steps |
| Arc start/end | Shift | snap the arc angle to 15° steps |
| Arc middle (half arcs) | Ctrl | off the grid; no other modifier. The ends stay put — see Arcs and curved wires |
| Path node (node-edit mode) | Alt | give the node symmetric curve handles |
| Curve handle | Alt | break the symmetry, making it a corner instead of mirroring the opposite handle |
Ctrl frees handle dragging from the grid here as well, as everywhere else.
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+click an item or conductor | add it to, or remove it from, the selection |
| Drag on empty space | rubber-band select everything inside, including element texts |
| Tab / Shift+Tab | step to the next / previous item without a mouse |
With something selected and no text being edited:
| Keys | Moves by |
|---|---|
| Arrows | the movement grid — 10 units by default |
| Alt+arrows | the fine grid — 1 unit by default |
| Ctrl+arrows | nothing moves; adjusts the alignment of a selected text group |
Both grids are configurable in Preferences → General, separately from the grid the mouse snaps to.
A few Alt+arrow presses leave a symbol between grid points, which bends its wires. Aligning items describes the command that puts it back.
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| mouse wheel | zoom in and out (default mouse mode) |
| Ctrl+mouse wheel | scroll up and down (default mouse mode); zoom in and out (trackpad/gesture mode) |
| Ctrl++ / Ctrl+− | zoom in and out |
| middle button drag | pan |
| Ctrl+wheel over the sheet tabs | switch sheet |
The zoom commands, trackpad mode and the Centre on cursor key are in Finding your place on a sheet §4.
Once you have picked a tool — an element, a shape, a template, a paste — a placement is in progress and follows your pointer until you finish it.
| Key | Result |
|---|---|
| Left click | place it |
| Right click | cancel. The sheet's own context menu is suppressed while a placement runs, which is why right-click cancels rather than opening a menu |
| Escape | cancel, from the moment the placement starts |
The text tool has no right-click branch of its own, but Escape cancels it before you click, as it does every other placement.
The element editor follows the same Ctrl = ignore the grid rule when dragging parts, text and handles, and the same Shift = 15° steps rule when rotating. It keeps its own grid settings, separate from the diagram's.
- Ctrl+click versus Ctrl+drag do different jobs, as above.
- Ctrl+Shift is reserved by the sheet view; do not expect it to combine freely.
- Shift on an element's text is the only way to move a label without its element — there is no menu item for it.
- Alt on a shape's corner is destructive in a useful way: it converts the rectangle or ellipse into a polygon, and that conversion is a real change to the item, not a temporary view.
- Keyboard-only control — driving QET without a mouse
- Preferences reference — the grid and movement settings
- Templates — which are placed by dragging, and nothing else
- Aligning items — snap a selection back to the grid
- Grouping items — select and move several items as one
- Pictures on a sheet — the handles for resizing, rotating and skewing a picture
- 3D mouse — panning and zooming with a SpaceMouse
- Tips & Tricks — faster drawing generally
