About

Build and Measure, also known as BAM, is a user-friendly 2D drafting program that comes at no cost, aiming to provide a lightweight experience for users.
Build and Measure is created and maintained by a single developer, and if you find any issues or bugs please report them, it really helps!

Get started

Get started with Build and Measure by diving into the tutorials or by reading the comprehensive documentation.
Build and Measure is available to download for both Windows and Linux, although not yet for MacOS, because that would require a code signing certificate, and that would cost too much to keep this app free to use.

Creating and saving projects

To create a project, press the "create project" button in the left navbar when in the start page.
This will open the editor with an unsaved project which you can now save by pressing the save button. The first time you press the save button in a new project you will be required to specify a file location but after that the file location will be remembered.

You can also save a project with the save as button which will let you select a file and write the project to that file, although the file location won't be stored so the save button will still save in the same file.

Opening projects

To open an existing project from a file, press the "open project" button in the left navbar when in the start page, this will let you let you select a project in the file explorer which will then be opened in the editor, when you press the save button the changes will now be written to the opened file.
If you save a project, a project shortcut will appear in the start page. Each project shortcut has a name field, and a button to show a pop-up menu. The pop-up menu has options to open the project, rename the project, to open the location where the project file is stored and an option to delete the shortcut (please note this will not delete the project file just the shortcut). You can also press on the image of the shortcut to open the project and press on the name field to rename it.

Coordinate system

The editor has a horizontal x-axis, and a vertical y-axis, where the x-axis starts at the left edge and goes to the right edge, and the y-axis goes from the top edge to the bottom edge. This means that the coordinates: (0, 0) will be in the top left corner of the screen and (screen_width, screen_height) will be the bottom right corner of the screen. When using the command box, the distances specified will be relative, meaning they wont go from (0, 0) but instead where the object started moving, or where the last drawing click was when drawing.

Panning and zooming

In Build and Measure you can hold down the scroll wheel and move the mouse to pan around the canvas, and rotate/scroll the scroll wheel to zoom in and out. To change how sensitive the zoom is, you can change the "zoom speed" in the settings menu.
If you are using trackpad and don't have access to a scrollwheel, you can zoom by moving two fingers and pan by holding down shift + alt when moving the mouse.

Control panel

The control panel is positioned in the top left corner of the editor and has buttons to save/export and control the views and sheets of the project.

Export button

The export button toggles the "export menu", which is a dropdown with four options to export the view/sheet to either SVG, PDF, PNG or JPG. And it also has some "export settings" to the right where you can choose if the background should be transparent and if only the selected objects should be featured in the export. Both views and sheets can be exported, a view will export everything inside of the crop region and a sheet will export everything inside of the title block.

Views and sheets

A project is divided up into multiple "views" and "sheets". Views are used to draw something in 1:1 scale which can then be exported to a sheet view via the viewport tool and then exported with a frame/title block.

Drawing objects

To draw an object, select which object to draw in the tool-bar and then press on the canvas to start drawing.
Each object requires a different amount of clicks:

• Line - polyline
• Rectangle - 2 clicks
• Circle - 2 clicks
• Ellipse - 2 clicks
• Arc - 3 clicks
• Spline - polyline
• Dimension - 3 clicks
• Textbox - 1 click
• Textbox With Leader - 2 clicks
• Image - 2 clicks (will keep it's aspect ratio unless the shift key is pressed)
• Viewport - 1 click (only available in sheets)

To change for example the line width and stroke color of the object that will be drawn, you can change the drawing properties in the drawing palette.

Snapping

When drawing, moving or selecting objects, you are able to press on certain "snap points" that will snap the mouse to that point. When drawing a line for example, you can hover over a snap point and the end of the line will snap to that point.
There are five different snap points:

• End point - end points are red snap points that are on the edge of objects, like the four corners of a rectangle.
• Center point - center points are blue snap points that are positioned between two edge points, or in the middle of an object.
• On line point - on line points are green snap points, that allow you snap to the closest point on for example a line.
• Intersection point - intersection points, are purple snap points, that allow you to snap to the intersection between two objects (this doesn't work on all objects, like for example splines).
• Canvas point - canvas points, are orange snap points, that allow you to snap to the grid which you can toggle in the settings menu and also the corners of the crop region in a view and the title block in a sheet.

You can also snap to specific angles when drawing and moving objects by pressing the shift key to snap to 90 degrees (horizontally/vertically) and the alt key to snap to a smaller angle that is specified in the settings menu, the default is 22.5 degrees. You could for example use this to draw a completely horizontal/vertical line or a line that has a 45 degree angle. This also works when moving objects, or when specifying a flip angle. Shift also has some other uses like for example drawing a completely squared rectangle.

Selecting objects

To select an object you need to activate the select tool which is the second to top button in the tool-bar.
You can select an object by clicking on it or by clicking on a snap point on that object.
You can also drag the mouse (with the left mouse button down) to select the objects that are fully within the area that appears (it checks if all of the red edge points are within that area).
If you press the control key while clicking on an object or dragging the mouse, any object that was previously selected will remain selected, this allows you to select multiple objects by clicking on each one while holding control.

Tool-bar

The tool-bar which is located on the left side is used to select the current tool and to open the drawing palette.

Here is a list of all the buttons:

• Toggle drawing palette button
• Select tool - to select objects
• Line tool
• Rectangle tool
• Circle tool
• Ellipse tool
• Arc tool
• Spline tool
• Dimension tool
• Angluar Dimension tool
• Textbox with Leader tool
• Textbox tool
• Image tool
• Viewport tool

Command-bar

The command-bar is similar to the tool-bar in many ways but it is only available when you have one or more objects selected and instead of selecting a tool it allows you to activate a command on the currently selected objects.

Here is a list of all the commands:

• Delete command - deletes the selected objects
• Move command - to move the selected objects with a distance
• Rotate command - to rotate the selected objects around a point
• Duplicate command - to duplicate and move the selected objects
• Scale command - to scale the selected objects with a scale factor
• Flip command - to flip the selected objects around a flip axis
• Split command - to split the selected objects on multiple points (only for lines and rectangles)
• Image clip command - to clip the selected image objects to all of the other selected objects
• Move to front command - to move the selected objects to the front of all other objects
• Move to back command - to move the selected objects to the back of all other objects
• Point move - is activated by pressing an end point on a selected object, and moves only that point
• Center move - is activated by pressing a center point on a selected object, and moves all points next to that center point

Drawing palette

The drawing palette lets you change different drawing properties/settings on the next object that will be drawn.

Here is a list of all of the drawing properties:

• Stroke color - the color of the stroke/edges and text
• Line width - the width of the stroke/edges
• Line dash - the dash of the stroke/edges
• Font size - the size of the text
• Font - which font family and font style to use on text
• Show measurements - whether to show the measurements of an object
• Scale text by line width - whether to scale the text size by the line width (multiplied by 20) instead of the font size
• Fill color - the color inside of an object
• Fill active - if the fill should be visible
• Selected image - the selected image of the object (only image objects)
• Insulation active - whether to activate insulation (only on lines)
• Insulation height - the height of the insulation (only on lines)
• Insulation radius - the radius of the insulation (only on lines)
• Visible angle - the amount of visible degrees
• Angle shift - how many degrees the visible angle should rotate/shift
• Border radius - the radius of the corners on the object
• Text align - the horizontal text alignment
• Text baseline - the vertical text alignment
• Text align on leader - similar to the "text align" property, but is for the "textbox with leader" object
• Line ending type - which type of line ending to use, the default is "none". You can choose between different arrows, circles and other shapes
• Line ending size - the size of the line ending that is choosen

Not every drawing property is available for every object, when you select a tool you can see which drawing properties that are grayed out and which ones that are available for that object.

Context menu

The context menu allows you to change properties of an object after it has been drawn and is similar to the drawing palette in that it has the almost same drawing properties, now called "object properties" with the exception of one extra to open the "text editor".
The context menu is only active when one or more objects are selected and the values in the context menu are the same as on the objects.

Differing

Two selected objects can have different object property values and then the context menu inputs might look a little different, "text/number" inputs now have the text "DIFF" with a purple background, "button" inputs become purple and get a different icon, "dropdown" inputs get a purple background and "color" inputs have a purple/white pattern.

Bottom panel

The bottom panel has buttons to change the project settings as well as some settings for the current view/sheet like the crop region size and title block. It also has links to the documentation, report issue form and request feature form.

Filter menu

The filter menu lets you filter through the selected objects and toggle which type of objects to select/deselect. This can be useful if you for example only want to select line and rectangle objects or if you want to deselect all textbox objects.

When the filter menu is opened by pressing the filter icon in the bottom left hand corner next to the command box, you will be able to toggle a checkbox on each object category to specify if it should remain selected or not. You can then press the select button to apply the changes made in the filter menu. There are also two buttons to help check/uncheck all of the categories.

Command box

The command box lets you specify precise distances when drawing and moving objects. The command box can either take a single value representing a distance or two values representing a distance in the x-axis and y-axis

One cool feature that you can use with the command box is to leave one section empty (a section is basically a measurement or distance). You can for example type ",100cm" or "100m," (note the ",") now you're still using two sections because of the "," but one of the sections is empty, when a section is empty it will default to the mouse position, so you could for example draw a line where the x coordinate is calculated based on the number you provided in the command box and the y coordinate is calculated based on the mouse position.

Here are some examples of how to use the command box:

• "100cm, 20mm" when drawing a rectangle - will create a rectangle with the width 100cm and the height 20mm
• "100" when drawing a line - will draw a line that's 100mm long (here we are assuming that the default unit is mm)
• "100cm, 5m" when drawing an ellipse - will create an ellipse with the radiusX of 100cm and the radiusY of 5m
• "10dm, 100" when moving an object - will move the selected objects 10dm in the x-axis and 100mm in the y-axis (here we are assuming that the default unit is mm)
• "10cm," when drawing a rectangle - will create a rectangle with the width 10cm and a height that will go to the mouse position is
• ",5dm" when moving an object - will move the selected objects so that the x-axis will go to the mouse position and the y-axis 5dm

When using a command the distance you enter will go in the direction of the mouse position, but you can also enter negative numbers that will go the other way.

Settings menu

The settings menu allows you to change different settings that affect the entire project.

Here is a list of all the settings:

• Appearance
  • Canvas background color - background color
  • Selected object color - color of selected objects
  • Line cap - how lines should look at the ends
  • Line join - how lines should look where they join
  • Polyline - if polylines should be active
  • Render movement info - if there should be information rendered when drawing
  • Fixed line width - if all objects will have the same line width no matter the zoom
• Snapping
  • Snap distance - how far away the mouse has to be to snap to a point
  • Angular snap interval - which angles to snap to when pressing the alt key
  • Snap to point - if the mouse can snap the end points (red)
  • Snap to center - if the mouse can snap the center points (blue)
  • Snap on line - if the mouse can snap to nearest point on a line (green)
  • Snap to intersection - if the mouse can snap the intersection points between two objects (purple)
• Grid
  • Grid active - if the grid should be active
  • Grid snap interval - the spacing between grid lines
• Units and precision
  • Default unit - the default unit of the project: mm, cm, dm or m
  • Decimal precision - how many decimals each measurement should be rounded to when being displayed (this does not influence how precise calculations are, it is just applies when displaying measurements)
  • Display unit on measurements - whether units (like "mm", "cm" and so on) should be displayed on measurements
  • Add space between number and unit - if there should be a space between the number and unit on a measurement
• Zoom
  • Zoom speed - what factor to multiply the screen size with every time you scroll/zoom (with other words how much bigger/smaller the screen gets when you zoom)
• Danger zone
  • Reset settings - if this setting is checked when you save the settings, all of the settings will be reset
  • ? - activate at your own risk!

Shortcuts

• ? - takes you right back where you belong, this page!
• escape - escaped out of the current action
• shift + d - toggles the drawing palette
• control + s - saves the project (same as pressing the save button)
• control + c - copy the selected objects to the clipboard
• control + v - paste any copied objects, images or text from the clipboard
• control + z - undoes the latest action
• control + y or control + shift - redoes the latest action
• control + a - selects all objects
• z - zooms to the crop region in a view or the title block in a sheet
• spacebar - activates the select tool
• l - activates the line tool
• r - activates the rectangle tool
• c + i - activates the circle tool
• e - activates the ellipse tool
• a - activates the arc tool
• d - activates the dimension tool
• v - activates the angle tool
• w - activates the textbox with leader tool
• t - activates the textbox tool
• s + p - activates the spline tool
• i + m - activates the image tool
• v + p - activates the viewport tool
• delete or backspace - deletes the selected objects
• c - activates the duplicate command
• m - activates the move command
• q - activates the rotate command
• s - activates the scale command
• f - activates the flip command