Move what you drew

With Select active, press on geometry and drag. What happens depends on what you took hold of, and that difference decides whether you move a shape or change it.

Pressed on	Result
A point	That point moves. The shape changes around it
A line or an arc, away from its points	The whole curve travels, unchanged
A circle's rim	Its radius changes. Drag its centre to move it
Anything, with several things selected	The whole selection travels together

Each drag is one undo step, however far you went.

Moving a shape rather than reshaping it

Grab a curve where there is nothing else to grab, and it keeps its size and its bearing and travels. That is usually what you want for an arc: a press on one of its ends is a press on one of the three points that define it, so pulling that grows the arc instead of carrying it.

The point you press stays under the cursor for the whole drag, so a line grabbed near one end does not jump.

TIP

To move several things at once, select them first, then start the drag on any one of them. A drag box is the quick way to pick up a whole shape. That press means the selection whatever it landed on, so a circle picked out with three other things travels rather than resizing.

What else moves

Geometry the drag is not holding stays where it is, unless a constraint gives it no choice. Then it gives the least ground it can: drag one end of a horizontal line and the other end comes up level with it, and nothing else in the sketch so much as twitches.

A drag is repeatable because of it: the same gesture ends in the same place whether you made it in one quick sweep or crept across the canvas, so a sketch does not slowly come apart under a slow hand.

With grid snap on, what rounds to the grid is where the shape is being placed, not where you happen to be holding it.

When nothing moves

A shape with no freedom left cannot be dragged, and sitting still is the honest answer: every dimension on it already decides where it goes. Change the dimension instead.

WARNING

Dragging is for arranging, not for dimensioning. A dragged point lands where the cursor was, to the pixel you released on. When a size matters, say so with a dimension.

The status footer counts what freedom the sketch has left, and the DOF readout highlights the geometry still carrying it.

In the 3D view

The same gestures work on the sketch plane in the 3D view, with one difference: a tap there goes to the face under the geometry rather than to the geometry itself. Orbiting is suspended for a press that grabbed something, so the drag moves the sketch rather than the camera.

See also

• Select things
• Apply a constraint for pinning down what you have arranged
• Undo, copy and paste