Drawing

Hew’s five drawing tools create 2D profiles. On the empty ground plane, a closed profile becomes a sketch region ready to extrude. Drawn directly on a solid’s face, the same tools split the face, carving regions you can push in or pull out. The tool decides which mode to use from what’s under your cursor; there is no explicit switch.

The five tools share one working sketch on the ground, so shapes drawn with different tools combine: draw an arc, switch to Line, and close it with a chord — the face forms the moment the circuit closes, exactly as if one tool had drawn it all. An arch profile, for instance, is three Line segments topped with an Arc, extruded once.

Layered shapes edit like a drawing, too. Where two closed shapes share a line, that line splits them into separate regions; select it with the Select tool and press Delete, and the regions merge into one larger face. Draw a rectangle, cap it with an arc, delete the line between them — one arch-shaped region, one pull.

Selection matches what you drew. Clicking a straight line selects just that line. Clicking a drawn arc or circle selects the curve up to wherever it crosses or touches other geometry — an untouched circle selects whole; a circle welded into an outline selects one run at a time, so you can delete the part inside without losing the rounded corner. Clicking inside a filled region selects the connected shape it belongs to, and shapes drawn apart from each other are independent: selecting, deleting, or moving one never touches the other, even though they share the working sketch.

While any drawing tool is active, the status bar explains the next step, the top-right readout shows live dimensions, and everything you type goes into that readout (see “Typing exact values” below).

Line (L)

Draws a chain of straight edges.

1. Click to anchor the first point.
2. Each further click commits one segment and continues the chain, with a rubber-band preview to the cursor.
3. Closing a loop (clicking back on your starting point, or completing any closed circuit) automatically forms a face and ends the chain.

To finish a chain without closing it: double-click, press Enter with nothing typed, or press Esc once. Pressing Esc again cancels the tool’s gesture entirely.

Exact lengths: once a chain is started, type a length (e.g. 750mm) and press Enter — the next segment commits at exactly that length along the direction you’re pointing.

Axis locking: hold Shift to lock the segment to whichever axis it’s already leaning toward, or press an arrow key for an explicit lock: → locks to X (red), ← to Y (green), ↑ to Z (blue). Press ↓ (or the same arrow again) to unlock.

Axis inference: you usually don’t need the lock at all. Move roughly along an axis and the segment snaps onto it by itself, the rubber band turning that axis’s colour and the tooltip naming it. Move away and it lets go — it’s a suggestion, not a commitment. A held lock draws a heavier line, so you can always tell which one you have. A point you snap to always wins over an inferred axis, and so does a construction guide you placed yourself.

Locking after the first click: an arrow key works at any point up to the moment a segment commits, not just before you start. Locking to an axis that leaves the plane you’re drawing on is allowed — the line keeps going into space, and Hew starts a fresh sketch on the plane that contains your last segment and the new direction, so an L-shape drawn this way stays on one plane and can still close a face. What it won’t do is silently drag the point back onto the old plane.

One consequence worth knowing: an outline that ends up spread across two planes can’t become a single face, because a face needs one plane. If you close a shape like that back onto its own start point, Hew tells you so rather than leaving you wondering why no face appeared.

Rectangle (R)

1. Click to set the first corner.
2. Click again to set the opposite corner.

Exact dimensions: after the first click, type both dimensions separated by a comma or an x (2m,1m, 50 x 30, 3',18") and press Enter. A single value makes a square. The rectangle grows in the direction your cursor was heading.

Circle (C)

1. Click to set the center.
2. Move outward (the readout shows the radius) and click to set a point on the rim, or type an exact radius and press Enter.

Standing a shape up: the arrow keys choose which plane you’re drawing on, and they work after you’ve placed the centre as well as before. Press → with a centre already down and the circle stands vertical, hinged through that centre — the same for Rectangle, Polygon, and an Arc you haven’t finished. Press the same arrow again to release it.

Note the difference from the line tool: there, an arrow picks the direction a segment runs, so ↑ draws straight up. Here an arrow picks the plane’s own axis — the direction it faces — so → and ← give you upright planes, and ↑ gives you a flat one at the height of the point you clicked.

Hew’s circles are stored as regular polygons, but they remember the exact circle you drew — center and radius ride along with the shape, power the Center/Quadrant/Tangent snaps, keep extruded walls smooth on screen, and let STL export re-facet the wall at whatever resolution you pick. The stored facet count adapts to the size of the circle: small circles get 24 sides, larger ones up to 96, keeping the worst chord deviation at about half a millimeter.

Polygon

A regular N-sided polygon, for hex bolt heads and nuts, gear blanks, standoffs, and dice:

1. Click to set the center.
2. Move outward — a preview shows the polygon with one vertex under the cursor, rotating to follow it — and click to commit, or type an exact radius and press Enter.

Sides: six by default. Type Ns at any point during the gesture (8s for an octagon) to change the side count — it can be typed before or after the radius, and re-typing it updates the preview immediately. The count is clamped between 3 and 120; above that, Circle is the right tool. The side count you last used carries over to the next polygon you draw, so a run of hex nuts doesn’t need retyping 6s each time.

Unlike Circle, a polygon carries no hidden analytic shape — the straight facets you see are its exact geometry, stored as plain edges like any other drawn line. The typed radius is the circumradius, center to vertex, matching SketchUp’s Polygon tool.

Arc (A)

A two-point arc, like SketchUp’s:

1. Click one endpoint.
2. Click the other endpoint to set the chord.
3. Move perpendicular to the chord to pull out the bulge, then click to commit.

Esc steps back one stage at a time. The readout shows the arc’s radius. Typed values work at both stages: in the chord stage a typed length places the second endpoint at that distance, and in the bulge stage it sets the bulge depth. A flat, zero-bulge arc is refused (“Pull out the bulge”). Arcs facet at the same density as circles of the same radius, and like circles they carry their exact center and radius for snapping, smooth display, and export.

Closing the arc: press Option/Alt mid-gesture to cycle what the commit produces — the open arc, a pie closed to the center with two straight edges, or a segment closed with the chord. The preview draws the closing edges and the readout names the mode. Both closed forms are complete profiles: on the ground they become a region immediately, and on a face they split it, ready to push/pull. The chosen mode sticks for further arcs until you switch tools.

Drawing on a face

Point any drawing tool at a solid’s face and it works there instead of on the ground: edges cut the face, and closed shapes (a rectangle, circle, polygon, or closed line/arc loop) split it into regions. The new regions are immediately push/pullable — recesses, through-holes, and raised bosses all start this way. At the top level, any plain object’s face is drawable directly — objects are immediately editable, just as they are with Push/Pull. Faces inside a group or component are the exception: double-click in first, and drawing is then scoped to what you entered.

Offset (F)

Offset copies an existing boundary a set distance inward or outward — the quickest way to draw a border, a rim, or a wall of even thickness without measuring anything.

1. Click a filled sketch region — its interior or right on its boundary edge, both work — or a solid’s face.
2. Move the cursor inward or outward — a preview of the offset outline follows at the distance shown in the readout.
3. Click to commit, or type an exact distance and press Enter.

Every edge of the boundary moves by the same distance: straight edges stay parallel, and a drawn circle or arc offsets to a true concentric curve — same center, radius changed by exactly the offset — so the result snaps, displays, and exports like any freshly drawn curve. A region with a hole offsets both boundaries at once, keeping the band between them even.

On a sketch region, the offset outline joins the same sketch, so both the original and the new region are ready to extrude — offset a circle outward and you have a ring to pull into a pipe wall. On a solid’s face, offsetting inward carves the face the way drawing on it does, leaving an inset region to push or pull; only inward offsets fit on a face.

If the distance is more than the shape can absorb — an inward offset past the middle, or an arc squeezed to nothing — the preview disappears and committing is refused with a message; nothing is committed halfway.

Editing a sketch

Deleting a line or curve. With the Select tool, click any sketch line to select it — a facet of a drawn arc or circle selects the whole curve — and press Delete. If the line separated two regions, they merge; if it closed a region, the region opens back up. Deleting a shape’s last line removes it entirely. Every line you can see is an ordinary line: pulling a region into a solid removes its outline from the sketch (the outline became the solid’s base), so nothing invisible lingers behind to complicate later edits. What survives an extrusion — a wall shared with a neighboring shape, a stray construction line — deletes like anything else.

Deleting or moving a whole shape. Click inside a shape’s filled region (or its row in the outliner) to select the connected shape, then Delete removes it or Move slides it — without disturbing anything else you’ve drawn. Selecting a single line or drawn curve and transforming it moves its whole connected shape the same way. A move that would land one shape on top of another is refused rather than welded, and rotating a shape out of the ground plane — standing a profile upright — splits it into its own sketch so the rest of the drawing stays put. (Curve-as-a-unit selection applies to arcs and circles drawn on the ground; lines drawn on a solid’s face become part of that solid’s geometry.)

Moving a point. For a free-standing sketch that hasn’t been extruded yet, the Edit Vertex tool (Tools ▸ Edit Vertex, or find it in the palette) adjusts a single point:

1. Click a sketch vertex to grab it.
2. Click its new position — the connected edges stretch to follow.

If a move would break the sketch’s topology (collapse a segment, fold a region), Hew refuses with a message and leaves the vertex where it was.

Inference while drawing

Every click snaps. The colored dot and label at the cursor tell you what you’re about to snap to — Endpoint (green), Center and Quadrant of a drawn circle or arc (teal), Midpoint (cyan), Intersection (amber — where a construction guide crosses an edge, a sketch line, or another guide), Tangent (violet — where an in-progress line just grazes a drawn circle), On Edge (red), On Face (blue), On Guide (purple), On Axis (the axis color), or Ground (gray). Lines you draw across each other need no cue of their own: crossings become real endpoints the moment they’re drawn. A dashed helper line appears through the snap point when the snap has a direction, such as an axis alignment. Construction guides let you add snap targets of your own; Precision, measurement, and guides covers them.

Typing exact values

There’s no input box to click, and none appears. With a tool mid-gesture, start typing: what you type appears in the top-right readout, Enter commits, Backspace edits. Every length-driven tool accepts:

• A bare number, read in your current display unit (1.5 = 1.5 m in Meters mode, 1.5“ in an imperial mode).
• An explicit unit that overrides the display unit: mm, cm, m, km, in, ft — 250mm, 3.5cm, 6", 2'.
• Feet-inches-fractions, SketchUp style: 5'3", 5' 3-1/2", 3 1/2", 5/8".

Angle tools (Rotate, Protractor) take plain degrees; Scale takes a plain factor, or a length in any of the forms above as a target dimension for the axis being dragged. Display units are set in Settings ▸ Units (Settings).