The Undo command will reverse the Weld effect altogether. Other than that, there is only one way that a Weld can be taken apart, and that is if the welded objects do not touch at all. In that case, Weld is the same as Combine, and the objects can be broken apart. But if they touch, welded objects become permanently fused and cannot be taken apart. They truly become one object.

Locking and Unlocking Objects

If you have ever spent an afternoon getting a drawing just the way you want it and then accidentally changed something that cost you time, effort, and frustration, you will appreciate the Lock command. Now you can ensure that an object stays the way you want it to be—no more accidental click-and-drags, rotations, or deletions.

To lock your object, select it and choose Arrange Ø Lock Object. The handles around the object change to little lock symbols (see Figure 3.9). You cannot move, resize, recolor, or delete the object. It’s there for the duration—until you unlock it with one of the other commands in the Arrange menu.

When you are ready to unlock the object, select it and choose Arrange Ø Unlock Object, or Arrange Ø Unlock All Objects if you have multiple locked objects you want to unlock all at once. Now you can modify, copy, or delete the object as needed.

Other Points of Interest

As you take your first few tours of DRAW, there are several other stops you will want to make. The following tasks are easily learned and performed, like all the other commands and functions discussed in this chapter.

Saving and Opening Files

Saving your work is arguably your most important task in DRAW—if you didn’t, nothing would be permanent. We won’t insult your intelligence by explaining how to do it. (The only time we have ever actually done that in a book or magazine article was in 1986, when our lead author attempted to show how to save changes in EDLIN. He reports that he no longer remembers the command...)

FIGURE 3.9  In the real world, this family would have lost its luggage six exits ago. With DRAW, however, you can lock the objects so that they don’t move...or fall all over the road.

The key to effective saving is first to establish an organized directory structure. DRAW remembers the directories you last chose for saving and opening files. So if you are consistent with your use of files and directories, you will have far less navigating to do in DRAW’s file windows.

Our only other advice: remember the hotkey Ctrl+S; it makes saving as routine as a Mark McGwire home run.

Zooming

The easiest way to zoom in on your drawing is to press F4. This hotkey takes into account all the objects in your drawing and chooses the closest magnification that still allows you to see them all.

If you need to zoom in on just a piece of your drawing, you’ve got two choices. To zoom on objects that are selected, click the Zoom tool, move to the page, click Button 2, and choose Zoom to Selection from the flyout. (Or better still, use the hotkey Shift+F2.) To zoom in on a particular collection of objects that may or may not be selected, click the Zoom tool and move to the page. Now any marquee you create on your drawing becomes the zoom area, and DRAW will automatically calculate the magnification.

TIP Efficient DRAW users combine a bit of hotkeying and a bit of mousing to make zooming much faster and easier. If you let the mouse go solo, you would have to mouse all the way over to the toolbox, click the Zoom tool, and then mouse back to the page to create the marquee. Instead, get your nonmouse hand into the act: use it to press F2 (the hotkey for the Zoom tool) while your mouse hand begins to draw the marquee.

With DRAW’s support for multiple drawings and multiple windows, you can open the same drawing in two different windows, keeping one of the windows zoomed out on the whole image while the other window is zoomed way in on a particular area. To open a drawing in a second window, go to Window Ø New Window. Then use one of the Tiling commands, if you want, to arrange the windows.

Aligning Elements

Align and Distribute is a two-tab dialog reached through the Arrange menu. It gives you a variety of ways to automatically arrange objects in relation to each other or to the page. For example, you can use the Align tab to align the top edges of several objects to the center of the page—all in one operation. If you do not align to a part of the page, the last object selected will be the “anchor,” and other objects will move to align to it.

The icons on the Align tab are fairly clear, but you may need to experiment to understand how multiple options relate to one another. For example, if you check Center of Page, then check the Left box, selected objects will be aligned with their left edges along the center of the page. They will also have their vertical centers aligned with the center of the page unless you uncheck that box.

The Distribute tab works similarly, but allows you to space objects equally across an area or the entire page. Both tabs have Preview buttons, so you can see the effect of your actions before you commit yourself.