How do I…
Add an annotation
Write notes and text, or draw lines, arrows and shapes on a sheet.
Where to find it: Annotations (left edge) › New annotation
- Open Annotations on the left edge.
- Choose the plus button (New annotation), type a name and choose Create annotation. Or open one already there — the one you open is where new marks are kept. The session records today’s date and your name.
- The drawing tools appear at the foot of the screen, beside the usual toolbar.
- Pick a tool: Text, Pen, Line, Arrow or Rectangle. Press a tool’s dot, or hold its button, for Note, Highlighter, Tapered, Circle and other shapes. Keyed note, Free shape and Cloud share one: it shows the one you chose last, everywhere you draw (Cloud an area). Erase annotation is a brush: hold and sweep, and every mark of the open session it passes over goes, in one undoable step. It leaves other sessions' marks and the compass alone; to remove those, select them and delete.
- Click or drag on the sheet. Text and Note are typed straight onto the drawing; see Write text on a sheet.
- Change sheets to keep drawing in the same session; its list gains a row per sheet. An annotation made before sessions existed stays on its one sheet: draw for it elsewhere and a new session of the same name starts there.
- Choose the tick when you are finished — on the session's row, or at the end of the tools.
A new session gets its own colour; its row shows the colours used.
After the tools come Colour, Thickness, Line style and Opacity; Ends, Sides, Fill and Words appear on a row above when the mark carries them. They set what you are about to draw, or change the mark you have selected; see Style a mark.
To change a mark already on the sheet, click it — any mark you can see, in any session, without opening that session first. With a tool in hand, click to select or drag to draw. Delete selected on the toolbar removes it. Marks and devices also select together; see Select a mark, or marks and devices together for handles, moving, and what a click lands on.
Writing with a pen or Apple Pencil saves a moment after you pause, and that burst is one undo step; see saving and sync.
Thickness and Opacity stay as you set them while you move between tools. Highlighter is the exception: it has its own thick, faded stroke, and your own setting comes back when you leave it.
Rename and Delete are on the session's own menu, the three dots on its row. Deleting takes its marks on every sheet it touched; one undo brings the whole thing back, and versions you have already issued do not change.
Annotations draw on top of icons and wiring, and a newer one sits over an older one. The eye on a session changes its visibility in the active View. Editors save that choice for everyone; Viewers change only their own temporary display. Newly generated output uses saved View settings; share links change only after publishing an update. The Views tab also lists Annotations, with the same eyes and saved choices. Expand a session and each sheet gets its own eye, so you can hide the marks on one floor and keep the rest. The compass and scale bar sit under Plan tools. See annotation and session.
If an older annotation was hidden from the shared drawing, an Editor can choose Show in shared drawing from its menu. Each View keeps its own visibility settings; ordinary eyes do not remove that shared hide.