A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Smart Pen:
- The Smart Pen Tool draws and edits Bézier paths without switching
tools: a click adds the next segment straight or curved (a panel
toggle; Tab flips the segment being placed or the last one), a drag
makes a smooth point (Alt breaks the handle, Shift snaps to 45°, Space
moves the point), a curve after a straight segment joins it tangent.
- On existing paths it selects and moves points, removes a point keeping
the shape (Alt-click), toggles smooth/corner (double-click), drags
handles, reshapes a segment by dragging it and inserts a point on it
(Alt-click); it closes, continues and joins open paths.
- The Smart Pen panel: next segment straight or curved, remove points
keeping shape, make smooth, make corner, retract handles, close or
join.
The tool stays out of both toolbars as shipped; the All Tools drawer
lists it under the add-on's heading. Commands are addon.pen.*; the
existing Pen tool, commands and menus are unchanged.
A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Path Precision Tools:
- Anchor Eraser Brush: painting over selected paths removes the anchors
under the brush that the outline can do without within a tolerance,
refitting the handles beside them (Alt ignores the tolerance, Cmd/Ctrl
deletes without refitting, pen pressure can scale the brush); one undo
step per stroke.
- Extend Path tool: dragging an end of an open path carries it on
straight, by stretching its last curve or along the circle it curves
on, or shortens it back along itself.
- Measure & Inspect tool: drag to measure distance and angle; hover a
path to read segment and path length, area, curvature, tangent and
anchor angles and handles, in the document's units.
- Anchor Inspector panel: the selected anchor's position and handles as
numbers, with Make Smooth (auto-smooth rule), Make Corner, Equalize
Handles, Remove Points Keep Shape, Add Points and three ways to close.
- Add Points at Crossings and Split at Crossings.
The tools stay out of both toolbars as shipped; the All Tools drawer
lists them under the add-on's heading. Commands are addon.pathtools.*;
the existing commands, tools and menus are unchanged.
VectorCraft had no Objects on Path. A click with the Objects on Path
tool attaches the selected objects to the path clicked. The tool is in
Edit Toolbar's Modify section and the Blend tool's flyout, and Object ›
Objects on Path › Attach and the context menu with two or more objects
selected choose it. The objects and the path go into an Objects on
Path group with the path at its bottom.
- object.objectsOnPath.attach orders the objects column by column from
left to right and top to bottom in each column. The first one sits
on the path's first anchor, the last one sits on the end of an open
path, and the rest are spread evenly by length; a closed path takes
them all the way round. Each object's attachment point (Pivot, one
of nine, default the center of its bounds without strokes) sits on
the path, and the object is turned to the path there. An object that
was rotated by an angle other than a multiple of 90° is first turned
to the nearest multiple of 90°. Rotate tilts every object by that
many degrees counter-clockwise. Symbol instances are measured by
their art. Guides, compound paths, type, paths without length and
graphs are refused with a reason.
- After every edit the objects go back on the path: editing the path
moves them, an object moved on its own goes back, and objects moved
into or out of the group in the Layers panel join the end of the
path or leave it. Scaling, shearing or reflecting the whole group
keeps each object's scale, shear or reflection, and the objects are
spread evenly along the transformed path again. Undo takes the path
and the objects back in one step, and a copied group stays live on
its own path.
- object.objectsOnPath.options changes Pivot and Rotate, and
object.objectsOnPath.expand leaves a plain group. Both act on the
groups that `ids` names, or on the groups of the selection when
`ids` is not given.
- The native file keeps the group live; SVG, PDF and the other exports
write plain art. The tool highlights the path under the pointer, has
a cursor entry, and Escape during a press cancels the click.
Part of #2545
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
Drag out from a segment, corner, circle or arc to place a dimension; plain clicks pick two points or two lines. Radial dimensions on perfect arcs, picas, Away/Between and Left/Center/Right text placement. The Properties panel edits a selected dimension, with Apply to All (dimension.applyToAll) and Set as Default. Dimension Selected Paths, the Arc/R/Ø prefixes and the custom defaults are left out. The refresh returns at once in documents without dimensions (Document::dimensions); a linked dimension moved on its own keeps its place; modes, units, line types, arrows and text placement are enums; the tool has its own icon.
Reported: with the Pen there was no way to edit curves in place as Ctrl does in Illustrator on
Windows (Cmd on the Mac), segments couldn't be grabbed, and the curve-editing tools felt slow and
sometimes didn't take a handle.
- Cmd/Ctrl held at a press with any tool but a selection tool now borrows the selection tool in the
engine (Session::pointer), not in the canvas: the selection tool chosen last, or Direct Selection
for the Pen, Curvature and anchor tools until one is chosen. The tool lent to isn't deactivated,
so the Pen goes on drawing its path after the release while that path stays selected; it no
longer draws on another open path selected meanwhile. Agents reach it with pointer_gesture
mods.cmd. With Cmd held the pointer is the borrowed tool's. Choosing a tool or switching
documents mid-gesture gives the tool back first.
- Pen + Alt over a segment of a selected path reshapes it, as the Anchor Point tool does.
- The handles shown are the handles that drag (one helper for Direct Selection, the Anchor Point
tool and Pen + Alt): Direct Selection now drags the handles of a path selected as a whole (as
the Pen leaves it, so Cmd + drag of a handle while drawing works), the Anchor Point tool no
longer grabs handles that Show handles when multiple anchors are selected hides, the nearest
handle wins, and a handle shorter than the tolerance leaves its anchor to be picked. The anchor
tools pick within Selection & Anchor Display > Tolerance instead of a fixed 4 px.
- path.reshapeSegment keeps a smooth anchor at either end smooth (its other handle turns with the
moved one) instead of kinking it.
- A dragged handle gathered its smart guide targets from the whole document on every pointer move
(21 ms per move on 20,000 paths): HandleSnap now gathers them once per drag (1 ms).
vectorcraft-cli perf measures handle and segment drags on a 5,000-anchor path.
- catalog::is_selection_tool and catalog::edits_anchors replace the UI's own lists.
- Tests in tools, engine and MCP (headless pointer_gesture); docs/mcp.md, control-protocol.md,
ROADMAP.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The issue asked for one-step symmetric shapes, splitting all selected art
along a line and cropping art to a rectangle as real geometry. Only the
freehand Knife and the Scissors existed, and neither works on compound
paths as one shape.
New commands path.mirrorCut, path.lineCut and path.rectCut cut the
selected paths and compound paths (inside groups too) with pathops
booleans against a half-plane or rectangle, and split open paths with
the Knife/Path Eraser helpers. Mirror & Cut reflects the kept half and
unites it with itself (open halves are joined on the axis). The draw2
piece helpers now rebuild compound paths too. Three tools (Eraser group,
original icons) preview the cut live while dragging and commit it as one
undo step; Mirror & Cut's axis and kept side are tool options shown in
the Control bar.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ham9zah