Faber Draw

The sheet is the model, not the PDF

A drawing is stored as .faber-draw.json: every line, symbol, note, arrow head and title block is a named object with a stable id.

A PDF is derived output. It cannot be opened as a drawing, and Faber will not convert one back. That sounds like a limitation until the third revision, when the difference is between moving a tag and redrawing a sheet.

There are two kinds of sheet. The first is for light device, note and wire diagrams. The second carries full engineering packages: the sheet at its real size, styled text, drawing primitives, and logos held inside the drawing as objects you can select, so a title block travels with its sheet.

Where it opens

• From a preview. Selecting a sheet in Faber shows it beside the chat, with zoom. Edit in Faber Draw opens the editor there; Open in new tab moves it to the Workspace tab.
• + Drawing, in Faber's file list, starts a blank sheet: give it a name and a size, from letter and tabloid up to ARCH E.
• From the Workspace tab: its file list, or Ctrl+K. See Faber Workspace.
• From a DWG or DXF: see CAD drawings.

Drawing by hand

Eight tools, each with a key, and the aids a draftsman expects.

• Snap (F3) catches ends, crossings, quadrants, midpoints and centres, then the nearest point on a line. Ortho (F8) keeps a line square; Shift holds 45° steps. Enter repeats the last tool.
• Type straight onto the sheet. Double-click a text or a leader to edit it; a wrapped note is edited as one paragraph.
• One selected object shows handles: a line's ends, a rectangle's corners and sides, a circle's quadrants, a leader's points.
• Arrowheads for each end (arrow, dot or plain), line types (solid, dashed, dotted, center), fill, rotation by quarter turns, Bring to front and Send to back.
• Copy, cut and paste between sheets, duplicate (Ctrl+D), nudge with the arrow keys, undo and redo.
• The wheel zooms at the pointer, from 10% to 800%; Space and drag pans. The status bar says what the next click will do and where the pointer is, in inches.

Weight and shade carry meaning

On an Aberdeen sheet, heavy black is new work and lighter grey is existing to remain. That convention lives in the drawing, so the editor has to be able to set it.

Every stroked object has a line weight, with Thin, Medium and Heavy presets, and a shade: New work, Existing, Light or Red, beside a free colour picker. Text has the same shade control, with Bold and Italic.

Selection is a set, not one object. Shift-click adds and removes, dragging from empty paper takes what the box fully encloses, Ctrl+A selects all, Esc clears. Drag any member and the whole set moves; every styling control applies to the selection. A style that cannot apply to an object, such as bold on a line, skips it, and the status line reports how many were changed.

CAD drawings: DWG and DXF

Open an AutoCAD drawing, mark it up or take it apart, and hand a DWG back.

• View. A .dwg or .dxf opens in Faber with its layouts, its layers on and off, and Color or Black. The drawing itself is never written to.
• Redline in Faber Draw makes a new sheet with the drawing in grey underneath and your marks in red on top.
• Import to Faber Draw makes a new sheet of the drawing's own lines, fills and text as objects you can edit. It stops at 25,000 objects; a larger drawing can still be redlined.
• In Draw, a sheet that came from a drawing keeps the viewer's bar: layout tabs, layers on and off, and Color, Black or Grey. It prints the way you left it.
• Save as DWG writes a DWG or a DXF: the drawing itself with what you added on a layer you name, or a drawing made from the sheet. It never writes over a file. Pictures on the sheet are left out, and it says how many.

Saving and printing a PDF

Save hands the sheet back to Faber, which checks it and writes it in one step; Save as writes it as a new sheet under the name and in the folder of the project you pick, and carries on in it; Download copy is there if that cannot be done. Render PDF is explicit: Faber makes the print only when you ask, and you name and confirm where it goes. The PDF is drawn from the sheet as it is, in vector, one page a sheet.

Save will not write over a sheet that was changed on disk since you opened it, in another window or by Faber's agent. It says so, your sheet stays in the editor, and Download copy keeps it. Render PDF saves the sheet before it makes the PDF, so it follows the same rule.

Open brings in a drawing from your computer. It is not a file of the project: the button then reads Save and downloads it, and the project's sheet that was open is left as it was.

What a save or a print did is announced over the canvas. Success clears itself; an error stays until you dismiss it, so a save that worked and one that failed never look alike.

What it does not do yet

• Dimensions and measuring, a symbol library, grouping.
• Arcs and ellipses, hatch patterns, text alignment.
• Free rotation and mirror; trim, extend, offset and fillet.
• Snapping to the lines of the DWG under a redline.
• Draw does not ask before another file replaces work you have not saved: save first.

Part of Faber, kept at arm's length

Faber Draw is one of the seven Workspace editors. They ship inside Faber and are served by Faber itself; there is no second program to start.

The editor has no reach into your folders of its own. Faber stays in charge of the files and hands the one selected drawing to the one tab over a checked message: the editor says it is ready, Faber sends the drawing, and a save comes back as a request. Faber checks what came back and writes it in one step. A tab opened by its own address, or left open after Faber's page was closed, asks Faber's server for the drawing its address names, and saves it, renders its PDF and writes its DWG by asking the server too. On a phone a sheet is for looking at: one finger scrolls it and two fingers zoom it.

Why it is built this way

Three decisions are worth knowing, because each one came from something going wrong.

• One set of numbers for every renderer. The editor, the preview, the reviewer's picture and the PDF all draw a sheet from the same measurements, so what you see is what prints.
• Colour is checked on both kinds of sheet. It used to be checked on one, which let a colour reach a stylesheet that overrode it: the edit saved and showed nothing.
• Selection is drawn as a dashed outline rather than by restyling the object. Highlighting a selection by changing its stroke hid the very weight and shade being edited.

This page matches Faber 0.10.86.