The shapes button appears in the electrical mode side menu. Pressing this button provides a pull-down menu of different outlines that can be applied to drawings. These outlines have no electrical significance, but can be used for illustrative purposes. In particular, in symbolic mode, this facilitates creating symbol representations. After a selection is made from the pull-down menu, the shape outline is ghost-drawn and attached to the pointer. The object is placed at locations where the user clicks.
The current choices in the pull-down menu are:
| box | Create a box, like the physical mode box command. |
| poly | Create a polygon, like the physical mode polyg command. |
| arc | Create an arc, similar to the physical mode arc command. |
| dot | Place a dot (an octagonal polygon). |
| tri | Place a triangle (buffer symbol). |
| ttri | Place a truncated triangle symbol. |
| and | Place an AND gate symbol. |
| or | Place an OR gate symbol. |
| Sides | Set the number of sides used to approximate rounded geometry, similar to the sides command in physical mode. |
None of these shapes have significance electrically, and for efficiency is is best to avoid using the SCED layer for these objects. In particular, arcs are actually wires, and arc vertices on the SCED layer are considered in the connectivity establishment. If the current layer is SCED when one of these objects is created, the object is instead created on the ETC2 layer. If the object must be on the SCED layer, the Change Layer command in the Modify Menu can be used to move it to that layer.
The dot, tri, ttri, and, and or choices work a little differently from the others. After selection, a ghost rendering of the shape is attached to the pointer, and the objects are placed where the user clicks. The object can be modified with the arrow keys:
| Up | expand by 2 |
|---|---|
| Right | expand by 10% |
| Down | shrink by 2 |
| Left | shrink by 10% |
| Shift-Up | stretch vertically 10% |
| Shift-Right | stretch horizontally 10% |
| Shift-Down | shrink vertically 10% |
| Shift-Left | shrink horizontally 10% |
| Ctrl-Arrows | cycle through 90 degree rotations |