Ellipse tool
Shortcut: E. The Ellipse tool draws ellipses and circles.
How to use it
Section titled “How to use it”Press, drag and release to define the ellipse’s bounding box. While dragging:
- Shift — constrain to a perfect circle.
- Alt — draw from the center instead of a corner.
- Esc — cancel the current shape without inserting it.
The tool stays active after each shape, so you can keep drawing; press V
(Select) or Esc to leave it. New shapes start with a 1px black stroke and no
fill — apply a fill afterwards in the Inspector. A near-zero drag is ignored.
Tool Options
Section titled “Tool Options”| Option | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Fill | color / none | Fill color for the next shape (with a no-fill toggle) |
| Stroke | color | Stroke (outline) color |
| Stroke width | 0–200 | Outline thickness |
| Reset | — | Restore the default options |
Tips & interactions
Section titled “Tips & interactions”- Hold Shift for a circle; combine with Alt to grow a circle from its center.
- To reshape an ellipse freely, convert it to a path and edit its anchors with the Direct Select tool.
See the tools overview and vector editing basics.