Snapping & drawing aids
Snaps are what make a CAD program feel good or feel awful, so they get their own row on the toolbar and their own function keys. The rule the Studio holds itself to: a snap mark appears if and only if clicking right now would commit that snap.
| What | Where you'll find it |
|---|---|
| The snap pills | The SNAPS group on the toolbar |
| Master on/off | F3, or the On pill |
| Ortho | Alt+F2, or the Ortho pill in MODES |
| Snap tolerance / grid size | Second toolbar row |
| Snap kind labels, hover highlight | Display & Defaults dropdown |
What a snap looks like
When a snap is live you get a hollow blue ring at the exact point the click will take, with a bright halo so it reads over any linework, and the object it is snapping to lights up in pale blue. The status readout names the snap in words — “Endpoint snap”, “Dimension midpoint”.
Weaker snaps — Near, ortho, alignment — draw the same ring more faintly, so a strong snap a few pixels away visibly wins. If you want the kind named right beside the cursor, turn on Snap kind labels in Display & Defaults.
A soft grey circle that follows your cursor is not a snap. That is just the cursor ghost telling you where the point tool currently is.
The pills
| On | F3 — the master. Off means every snap and magnet stops, and objects land exactly where you click. |
| End | F7 — endpoints. |
| Cen | F6 — centres of couplings, fittings, valves, heads, hangers and drafting shapes. |
| Mid | Shift+F5 — pipe and segment midpoints, and the middle of a drafted dimension. |
| Pipe | F4 — pipe centreline. Also the master gate for Perp, Near and Int. |
| Perp | F8 or F9 — perpendicular. |
| Near | Quarter-inch stations along an object. No function key — see the note below. |
| Int | F10 — crossings, both plan crossings and true 3D ones. |
| Tile | Ceiling tile centres from an imported ceiling grid. The sprinkler tool's best friend. |
| Lt·Mid | On ceilings with no grid, locks to the midpoint between two nearby light fixtures. |
| Align | Magnetic smart guides — pulls into line with existing head rows, columns and pipe ends, and draws the dashed guide. |
| Ctr | Dead centre of the live dimension under a head you are placing — the point where both readouts show the same number. |
| Tile ✕ | Shows a mark at every spot the tile magnet can land a head. A view aid; never plots. |
| Grid | The drawing grid, at the Grid size on the second toolbar row. |
Tab cycles the candidates
When several snaps are competing under your cursor, press Tab to step through them. The status bar names each one as you land on it; click to take it. Move the mouse and the cycle ends.
Mid-draw you can also force one snap for the next pick only: E endpoint, C centre, M midpoint, N near. Esc cancels the one-shot.
Ortho, elevation lock, and rounding
- Ortho (Alt+F2) locks to the axis. Hold Shift to flip it temporarily — the pill shows the state you are actually getting. Ortho is a hard axis lock: a snap decides where along the axis you land, never whether you leave it. 45° runs are included.
- Elev Lock (Shift+F2, or the tick on the second toolbar row) holds the elevation in the Elev box while you draw, even when you snap to something at a different height.
- Rounding snap (Shift+F3) rounds picks to a clean increment.
Ortho is a mode, not a snap, so it keeps working with F3 off — and it still shows its mark, so the plan always says why the point moved.
The magnets
Beyond the classic object snaps, the Studio pulls toward things a sprinkler designer aims at anyway:
- Ceiling tile centres, including the two quarter points of a 2×4.
- The centreline of a room, and the centre point between two walls, two heads, or a wall and a head.
- Column centres.
- Existing head rows and columns, from about a foot out, with a dashed guide line to show what you caught.
- Parallel alignment with existing linework while you are placing the end of a new line.
All of them die with F3.
Rhythm assist — the program pedalling with you
Place three heads in a rhythm — the same spacing, the same position in each bay, the same station along a pipe — and a faint ghost of the next one appears.
- Tab, or a click on the ghost, places it. The next prediction appears immediately, so Tab-Tab-Tab walks the row.
- Hold Tab to sweep — placements flow with a running count in the readout and stop at the first one that would break a rule or leave the pattern. The whole sweep is one undo.
- . repeats your last placement; hold it to sweep the same way.
- Ignoring a ghost costs nothing. Keep working and it goes away; ignore it often enough and the assist backs off by itself.
A ghost only appears for a placement that would pass the same rules as a manual click — it will not offer you a head inside an obstruction.
When snapping fights you
- F3. If the problem disappears, a snap was the cause.
- Turn off the specific pill. Near is the usual culprit — it can slide a pick along a line you did not mean to touch.
- Reduce Snap tol on the second toolbar row so the aperture is tighter.
- Hide or lock the layer you keep catching. Imported linework under your cursor is the most common source of a wrong pick.
- Use Tab to take the one you actually want rather than fighting the ranking.
If a snap mark appears somewhere the click refuses to go, that is a bug by definition — press F12 and circle it.