Tools
Use this page to look up any tool in the rail: what it does, its key, and where it leads. The tools sit in a rail down the left edge of the editor, grouped into Utilities, Editor, Lettering, and Automation. Hover any tool to read what it does; the selected tool is highlighted. See The workspace for how the rail fits with everything else.
A tool with a "+" has variants you reach by right-click or long-press.
New in v1.3.0. After you draw with Pen, Freehand, Satin column, Individual stitch, or one of the four shape tools, what you drew stays selected and the tool stays ready for the next one. While something is selected, a press on it grabs that object instead of starting a new drawing.
Choosing one of those tools again drops the selection, so your next press starts a new drawing. (Before v1.3.0 you had to press Esc first.) The Cutter and the fill-angle picker keep the selection, because they act on it.
The keys below are the default Illustrator preset. You can change them or switch presets in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts, and the rail always shows each tool's current key. See Customizing shortcuts.
Utilities
| Tool | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Select | V | Click or drag a marquee to pick objects. Shift adds, Alt subtracts. |
| Lasso select | Q | Draw a freehand boundary to pick everything inside it. |
| Color select | C | Click a color to select every object that shares it, for example every red part of a logo at once. |
| Pan | H | Drag to scroll the canvas. Hold Space to pan with any tool. |
| Ruler | Backslash | Drag to drop a measured guide line (distance and angle). Its variants (Rectangle guide, Ellipse guide) draw dashed outlines. See Guides. |
| Cutter | K | Select a shape or a path, then drag a line across it to split it into separate pieces. Hold Shift to snap the cut to horizontal, vertical, or 45°. |
Editor
| Tool | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Individual Stitch | S | Click to place stitches one at a time. Builds a stitch block. |
| Pen | P | Click to drop anchors, drag to shape curves. Right-click places a curve point (new in v1.3.3). Double-click to finish. See Draw a path with the pen. |
| Freehand | N | Drag to draw a path by hand. Draw as many strokes as you like, then commit them as one object. See Freehand drawing. |
| Satin column | Draw a column of satin stitches between two parallel rails. Right-click places a curve point; press Enter or ✓ to finish (as of v1.3.3, a right-click no longer finishes it). See Create a satin column. | |
| Rectangle | M | Drag to draw a rectangle. Hold Shift to constrain to a square. |
| Ellipse | L | Drag to draw an ellipse. Hold Shift for a circle. |
| Polygon | Y | Drag to draw a regular polygon. Sides set in the Properties panel. |
| Star | Drag to draw a star. Points and inner radius set in the Properties panel. | |
| Add shape | Opens the shape library, with a live preview of the real stitches. See Add a shape. | |
| New pixel art | Makes a blank 16×16 sprite and opens the pixel editor on it. See Create pixel art. | |
| Line art | New in v1.3.3. Makes a new line drawing, starting from a heart, and opens the line-art editor on it. Lines that touch are joined and sewn as one thread, with the stitching order planned for you. See Draw line art. |
Lettering
| Tool | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Text | T | Add text using digitized fonts. Type in the dialog, placed centered on the hoop. Double-click text to edit it. See Add text. |
| Lettering | Opens your font library, where you edit a font's stitch design. See Edit a font. | |
| Import font | Bring in your own .ttf or .otf and digitize it. See Import a font. |
Lettering and Import font are rail-only: they have no keyboard shortcut, and don't appear in the menus or the command palette. New pixel art and Line art have no shortcut either, but they are in the Tools menu (as New Pixel Art… and New Line Art…) and the command palette.
Automation
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Import | Opens a chooser: Reference image, Embroidery design, or Vector graphics (SVG, PDF, or PDF-compatible Adobe Illustrator .ai). |
| Auto-digitize | Opens a chooser: Photostitch (a photo), Cross-stitch (pixel art), or Auto-Trace (a logo or flat clip art). Everything in it runs on your own computer. |
| Advanced auto-digitize | Opens a second chooser: Pixel art, Line art & Redwork, or Vector stylization. These run on Boldbobbin's servers and cost credits. New in v1.3.0. |
| Magic wand (W) | New in v1.3.3. A tool rather than a chooser: click a region of a reference picture and it becomes a stitched shape in its own thread. Shift-click adds another region to the one you just made. Runs on your own computer. See Use the magic wand. |
The Magic wand sits below the two choosers and is the only one of the four with a key. Like Auto-digitize, it sends nothing anywhere.
The two auto-digitize entries are kept apart so you always know where your picture goes: Auto-digitize keeps it on your computer, while Advanced auto-digitize sends it to Boldbobbin's servers and says so before you pick a method. For example, a client logo you've agreed not to share stays local with Auto-Trace. See Advanced auto-digitize.
Cut a shape in two
The Cutter (K) splits shapes along a line you draw.
- Select the shape or shapes first. The cut only affects what's selected, so you can drag a line straight across a crowded design and touch nothing else.
- Drag a line across the selection. Hold Shift to constrain the cut to horizontal, vertical, or 45°; hold Ctrl/Cmd to snap its endpoints. Press Esc to cancel mid-drag.
- Release. The pieces become the new selection, and the Cutter stays active so you can keep cutting. A cut across several shapes at once is a single undo.
You don't need to drag all the way across a filled shape: the cut line is extended past its edges for you. What the Cutter can cut:
- Vector shapes (fills, rectangles, ellipses, imported paths) split into separate regions.
- Open paths (a pen or freehand curve) split wherever the knife crosses them, into as many pieces as there are crossings. Cross a curve twice and you get three pieces.
- Satin columns are divided across their width into shorter columns, each still a proper satin column. Cutting a closed (ring) column once opens it rather than splitting it in two. Here the line is used exactly as drawn, so stopping partway means "cut straight across from here".
- Text splits by letter: cutting "Hello World" between the words gives "Hello" and "World", both still real, still-digitized text. A letter is never cut through the middle.
- Stitch blocks can't be cut, and locked objects are skipped.
If the line misses, Boldbobbin says so: "The cut line didn't cross a selected shape. Select a shape and drag a line across it."
The Cutter is in the tool rail (and in the glyph editor), but not in the Tools menu.
Freehand drawing
The Freehand tool (N) draws by hand, and a drawing can be made of several strokes. Each drag adds a stroke to a draft; nothing is committed until you say so, so you can build a shape up in passes:
- Start a stroke near the end of the last one and the two weld into one smooth node, as if you never lifted the pen. Start further away and Boldbobbin bridges the gap with a curve that follows both ends' direction.
- Finish near where you began and the path closes into a loop. An animated ring appears around your first node as you come into range, so you can see the close coming.
A small draft bar sits at the bottom of the canvas while you draw:
| Button | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Green check | Enter | Commit every stroke as one object |
| Orange arrow | Backspace | Drop the most recent whole stroke |
| Red cross | Esc | Discard the whole draft |
Freehand shares its Fill type with the Pen tool: pick either tool with nothing selected and the Properties panel offers a fill for the paths you're about to draw. Changing it for one tool changes it for the other. The choices are Default, Running stitch, Tatami fill, and Satin column.
Default is the factory setting, and it reads what you drew: an open line becomes a satin column, a closed loop becomes a tatami fill. Pick one of the other three to override that and always get the same thing.
Guides
Guides are on-canvas reference marks that never stitch out: use them to measure, frame, and align your work. Three tools in Utilities make them (the Ruler slot; its variants are on the tool's fly-out):
- Ruler (Backslash): drag a measured line, labelled with its length and angle. Hold Shift to snap it to horizontal, vertical, or 45°.
- Rectangle guide / Ellipse guide: drag a dashed outline, labelled with its width × height, for framing or alignment.
Guides are objects like any other: they appear in the Layers panel tagged "guide" and, with the Select tool, you can move, resize, rotate, and (for a line) drag its endpoints. They're left out of stitching and of exported files. For example, draw a 100 × 100 mm Rectangle guide to mark the area of a small hoop, and keep your design inside it.
Hide a guide the way you hide anything else: with its eye toggle in the Layers panel. (The canvas Guides toggle was removed in v1.2.2.)
Edit modes (not tools)
You don't pick these from the rail: you enter them by double-clicking an object with the Select tool:
- Node-edit (double-click a vector, or Edit shape in the action bar): move anchors and handles, change node type, insert/delete anchors, edit satin rungs, and Close curve / Open curve an open or closed path. Select several nodes with Shift-click or a box drag, slide a node along its lines with Ctrl/Cmd-drag, and move, rotate, or scale the selection with G, R, S (v1.3.2). With no node selected, the panel shows curve-level tools including Smooth curve, which rounds every node into one flowing curve, and Fill holes. See Edit nodes.
- Stitch-edit (double-click a stitch block): select, move, insert, and delete individual stitches, and change a vertex between Stitch, Jump, and Trim.
- The pixel editor (double-click a sprite, or Edit pixel art in the action bar): a full-screen mode with its own tools and its own undo history. See Create pixel art.
- The line-art editor (double-click a line drawing, or Edit line art in the action bar; new in v1.3.3): its own canvas with Vector, Stitch and Realistic views and the sewing animation, where you draw the lines and choose how each piece is sewn. Save puts the drawing in the design and keeps the editor open; Done saves and closes. See Draw line art.
Edit shape has a key as of v1.3.3: A in the default preset (N in the Inkscape preset). It opens whichever of these the selected object takes, and pressed in node-edit it leaves. See Shapes and fills.
Commit with Enter, cancel with Esc.
Floating action bar
When you have a selection (with the Select tool, not in an edit mode), a small action bar appears at the bottom of the canvas. Depending on what's selected, it offers:
- Delete, Duplicate
- Edit shape: enters node-edit on a single selected vector, the same as double-clicking it. (Not shown for text, which opens the text dialog instead.)
- Edit pixel art: opens the pixel editor on a selected sprite.
- Edit line art: opens the line-art editor on a selected line drawing (new in v1.3.3).
- Order (send to front / forward / backward / to back)
- Convert to…: what it offers depends on what you picked. With several objects selected it offers only Line art. See Convert to below.
- Symmetry (Flip horizontal / Flip vertical)
- Reverse direction: for a single reversible vector
- Fill holes: for a single path that has holes in it (new in v1.3.1)
- Center on hoop
- Zoom to selection (the magnifier, Shift+2): fits the selection to the view (new in v1.3.1)
- Boolean: Union and Intersection work on two or more selected shapes; Subtract and Exclude need exactly two. As of v1.3.3 they have keys (Alt+Shift+U / S / I / X, see Shapes and fills). A line drawing takes no part in them: it has lines, not an area.
- Join blocks, Group, Auto entry/exit: two or more selected
Align and Combine for a multi-selection live on the essentials bar rather than here. So does Divide by drawing (new in v1.3.3), shown when you select shapes together with a line drawing: each area the drawing's lines close becomes a shape of its own. It is also on the right-click menu, after the four path operations. See Divide by drawing.
Convert to
Convert to… turns one object into another kind. It is a one-way trip: the result is a new object, and undo is how you get the old one back.
| Convert to | Available on | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Stitch block | Anything that generates stitches | The stitches, frozen. They stop following the shape. A multi-color object (a sprite, or a fill with a two-thread gradient) becomes one block per thread. As of v1.3.1, freezing keeps any Pro export gate the object had. |
| Curve | A parametric shape (rectangle, star, and the like) | The same outline as a plain path, with the shape's knobs removed, so you can node-edit it freely. |
| Curve | A line drawing | Its lines as plain paths, sewn exactly as before. Editing a line no longer plans the route again. |
| Line art | One or more paths or shapes (not text, a sprite, or a stitch block) | One line drawing holding all their lines, sewn as one route. The only conversion offered for several objects at once. New in v1.3.3. See Draw line art. |
| Satin column | A single open path | The path read as a centerline, widened into a column. |
| Satin columns | A shape filled with inner satin | A folder of real satin columns and running Travel objects, in the order they sew, each one editable. |
| Geometry | Text | One editable letter per glyph. They stop being text. |
| Connected component layers | A pixel sprite | A folder of sprites, one per connected blob of color, each named by its thread and cropped to itself. |
For example, convert a star to a Curve when you want to pull one point out further than the others, which the star's own knobs can't do.