Vector Tools

Basic Shape Tools

Rectangle R

The Rectangle tool creates rectangular shapes. Click and drag on the canvas to define the rectangle's bounds. Hold Shift while dragging to constrain to a perfect square. After creation, you can adjust corner radius in the Inspector — set uniform rounding or control each corner independently.

Ellipse O

Creates ellipses and circles. Drag to define the bounding box, or hold Shift to constrain to a perfect circle. Ellipses support all fill types (solid, gradient, image), strokes, and effects.

Line L

Draws straight lines. Click and drag from the start point to the end point. Lines support stroke styling (weight, color, dash pattern, cap style) but not fills.

Arrow A

Like the Line tool but with an arrowhead at the end point. The arrowhead scales proportionally with stroke weight. Both line and arrowhead share the same stroke styling.

Pen Tool P

The Pen tool creates bezier paths — the foundation of precise vector illustration. It works by placing anchor points and adjusting cubic bezier control handles:

• Click to place a corner point (straight line segment)
• Click and drag to place a smooth point with symmetric bezier handles
• Hold Shift to constrain the new segment to 45-degree increments
• Double-click or click the first point to close the path
• Press Escape to complete an open path

After creation, switch to the Node Edit tool (double-click the path with the Select tool) to edit anchors, holes, segments, and handles. Node editing is scoped to one path so local coordinates stay unambiguous:

• Click an anchor to select it; Shift+click adds or removes anchors. Dragging an already-selected anchor moves the selected group.
• Drag a Bézier handle to adjust curvature. Corner handles are independent; Smooth keeps tangent directions aligned; Symmetric also keeps lengths equal; Automatic derives handles from neighboring anchors.
• Double-click a segment to insert a node at the nearest curve parameter, preserving the cubic within floating-point tolerance.
• Backspace/Delete removes selected anchors when the contour remains valid. Use the visible panel for coordinates, relative handle vectors, insert, open/close, reverse, line, and curve conversion.
• Shift+C / Shift+S / Shift+Y / Shift+A apply Corner, Smooth, Symmetric, or Automatic mode. C toggles corner and smooth.
• Arrow / Shift+Arrow nudges selected anchors by the configured amounts. Escape cancels an active drag before leaving node editing; a second Escape exits.

Break/split and joining separate endpoint objects are deliberately disabled until their correspondence and dependent-feature policies are complete. Topology edits are also blocked for paths used by text-on-path, masks, motion/timeline data, or interactions; detach or convert the dependent feature first.

Pencil Tool Shift+P

The Pencil tool enables freehand drawing. Click and drag to draw a path that follows your cursor. Behind the scenes, Varve applies two stages of refinement:

1. Ramer-Douglas-Peucker simplification — Reduces collinear points while preserving shape
2. Schneider least-squares cubic bezier fitting — Converts the simplified polyline into smooth bezier curves with automatic corner detection

The result is a clean, editable path with far fewer points than the raw input. You can further refine it using the Node Edit tool.

Polygon and Star Tools

The Polygon tool creates regular polygons (3 to many sides). The Star tool creates star shapes with configurable points and inner radius. Both are accessed through the shape tool group in the toolbar. After creation, you can adjust the number of sides or points in the Inspector.

Frame Tool F

Frames are containers that clip their content. They're analogous to artboards in other design tools. Frames can contain other nodes as children and support:

• Automatic clipping — Content outside the frame bounds is hidden
• Frame presets — Place frames at standard screen sizes (phone, tablet, desktop, social, print) from the Inspector while the Frame tool is active, or resize frames in-place with the Resize to Preset dropdown in Position & Size (with instant search, category chips, orientation swap, and batch multi-frame resizing)
• Flex layout — Enable auto-layout to distribute children using signed spacing, wrapping, constraints, and literal relative sizing
• Grid layout — Enable CSS Grid for complex responsive layouts with explicit tracks and spans; see the Auto Layout guide
• Clip content toggle — Choose whether children are clipped to the frame boundary

Boolean Operations

Varve supports four boolean operations for combining paths and shapes. These are accessible from the Object menu (Ctrl+Alt+U for Union, Ctrl+Alt+S for Subtract, Ctrl+Alt+I for Intersect, Ctrl+Alt+X for Exclude) or from the floating toolbar's boolean flyout when multiple shapes are selected:

• Union — Combines shapes into a single shape using the union of their areas
• Subtract — Removes the top shape's area from the bottom shape
• Intersect — Keeps only the overlapping area
• Exclude — Keeps non-overlapping areas (XOR)

Boolean operations use polygon-based Greiner-Hormann clipping for accurate results, operating on actual path geometry through adaptive bezier sampling.

Shape Builder

For region-level construction, use the Shape Builder tool (Shift+B). It previews the individual faces formed by selected filled shapes and closed paths, then lets you Merge, Erase, Extract, Create, or Divide only the regions you chose. Unlike a whole-object Boolean, it does not assume that every touched object or every region should be included. When a visible stroke blocks a source, the tool panel offers an explicit “Outline strokes and retry” action instead of silently flattening the stroke.

Selection and Manipulation

The Select tool (V) is your primary tool for manipulating nodes:

• Move — Drag selected node(s) to reposition
• Resize — Drag corner or edge handles
• Rotate — Drag outside a corner handle
• Nudge — Arrow keys use the configurable small amount; Shift+Arrow uses the independent big amount, including positive fractions
• Multi-select — Shift+click or marquee drag
• Auto-reparent — Dragging a node into a container's bounds automatically reparents it
• Ctrl-bypass — Hold Ctrl during drag to suppress auto-reparenting

Precise movement

With the canvas focused, Arrow keys move the selected object or frame in document axes, even when an idle creation tool remains active. Open Settings > Nudging & Movement to choose the small and big amounts; values are stored locally and displayed using your current unit preference. Keyboard movement is exact, independent of zoom and pointer snapping, and never reparents an object.

• Arrow — Small nudge
• Shift+Arrow — Big nudge
• Pointer drag — Uses scoped snapping and may reparent according to the drop target
• Ctrl/Cmd+Shift while dragging — Preserve the current parent

Text fields, the Layers tree, vector editing, and other focused controls keep ownership of Arrow keys for their own navigation.

Layers and ordering

The Layers panel keeps a compact, searchable hierarchy for the active page. Drag a layer from its handle to place it before or after a sibling, or into a frame or group to reparent it. The drop indicator is the committed destination, and locked or cyclic destinations are rejected before the document changes.

Visibility, lock, rename, disclosure, and context-menu controls remain independent of the drag handle. Keyboard layer commands and the existing move actions provide a non-pointer alternative, and a completed drag is one undoable document operation.

Arrange Operations

Control the stacking order of nodes with the Arrange menu or keyboard shortcuts:

• Bring to Front — Ctrl+Shift+]
• Bring Forward — Ctrl+]
• Send Backward — Ctrl+[
• Send to Back — Ctrl+Shift+[