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Heckers Sketch help

Scaled drawing in three dimensions, without the week of learning.

Start here

The keyboard and the mouse
Every key and every drag, on one page.
Typing measurements
Type a size instead of dragging for it.
Commands
Every slash command, grouped by job.

Drawing

Line
A line, or a chain of them.
Rectangle
Two corners, and it makes a face.
Circle
A circle from the middle out.
Arc
An arc between two points - and rounded corners.
Text
A note on the drawing.
Snapping
How the cursor finds the point you meant.

Shaping

Push/Pull
Lift a face into a solid.
Revolve
Spin a face round an axis.
Offset
A parallel copy of a face's edge.
Drill
Push a shape right through.
Faces, front and back
Which side is out, and why it matters.
Solids and 3D printing
Why a shape does or does not print.

Picking and moving

Select
Pick what you want to work on.
Move
Move things, or copy them.
Rotate
Turn things about a point.
Erase
Erase edges - and the faces they hold.
The entity panel
What is picked, and what you can change.
Groups
Keeping one piece to itself.
Heck
The drawing as text you can read and type - the file is written in it.
Writing Heck
The whole language on one page, with examples.

Measuring

Tape measure
Read a distance, lay a guide.
Dimension
Put a measurement on the drawing.
Protractor
Lay a guide at an angle.
Units, scale and precision
Three settings people mix up.

Looking around

Orbit
Spin, pan and zoom - and snap to a view.
The view cube
Which way you are facing.
The plan view
Looking straight down, and cutting through.
The working plane
Which surface a click lands on.

Your drawing

Files and sheets
The menu: open, save, recent files - and a file's sheets.
Exporting
Pictures, film and shapes.
Recording a move
The little film that shows off a drawing.
Printing
On paper, at a real scale.
When it breaks
Telling us about it.
This and the others
What it is for, and when to use something else.

The shop

The stair calculator
A straight flight to code, placed where you pick it - and its stringer sheet.
Radiant heat layout
Tube loops for a slab, a heat load, and the submittal.
The fitting wizard
Duct fittings from your measurements.
The pipe spool
A run of pipe, leg by leg.
Laying a piece out flat
A pattern to cut from sheet.

About this help

These pages are the same in the program and on the web. In the program, /manual opens them from a copy kept beside Heckers Sketch, so they are there without the internet once it has downloaded them.

Click any picture or animation to see it larger - in its own window in the program, or a new tab on the web.

Light or dark. The button at the top of every page switches between them, on the web and in the program alike: Auto follows whatever your phone, desktop or - inside the program - the program itself is set to, and Light and Dark say so regardless. The choice is remembered.

Every picture is taken on an empty sheet by driving the program itself, with the smallest thing that shows the tool.