Moving and Duplicating a Selection

Transforming and Duplicating Sketch Geometry covered the transform tools that copy a selection by a defined vector, angle, or scale. This chapter covers two more direct, hands-on ways to work with a selection: dragging it to a new position, and stamping out copies of it with Translate in copy mode.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure that:

• You've completed Drawing Basic Shapes and can select geometry with the Select tool.

Dragging Geometry

There's no separate handle to grab. You drag sketch geometry directly with the Select tool — press on it, move past a few pixels, and it follows the cursor. Release to drop it, and the sketch re-solves so every constraint still holds.

What you grab decides what moves

This is the part worth learning, because the same drag gesture does three different things depending on where you press:

So to reshape a line, grab an end. To reposition it, grab its middle.

Moving several things at once

Select more than one entity first — click, then Shift-click, or drag a box around them — and pressing on any one of them drags the whole group. That's the way to move a shape built from several segments without disturbing its internal proportions.

Pressing on empty space and dragging does something different: it starts a selection box rather than a move.

Steps

1. Switch to Select.
2. Press on the geometry — its body to move it, an endpoint to reshape it.
3. Drag. A short press-and-release is treated as a click, so you need to move a few pixels before the drag begins.
4. Release to commit, or press Escape mid-drag to abandon it.

Escape restores every parameter to its pre-drag value and re-solves, so a cancelled drag leaves nothing behind.

Note: fixed geometry says so

A shape held by a Fix constraint can't be dragged. Instead of failing silently, the prompt reads "Geometry is fixed and cannot be dragged." If a drag does nothing at all, check whether that message appeared.

Tip: thin curves

A spline or an ellipse can be fiddly to press accurately. Drag a selection box around it first — easy even for a thin curve — then press anywhere on the selected geometry to move it as a group.

Dragging is a Select-tool behaviour. While a drawing tool is active, pressing on existing geometry starts a new shape rather than moving the old one.

Duplicating a Selection with Translate

Where dragging relocates a selection, Translate in copy mode duplicates it — laying down evenly spaced copies along a vector you define.

Where it is

The sketch toolbar's transform group — the same button that holds Mirror, Rotate, Scale and Symmetry. Translate has no keyboard shortcut. It reads your current selection, so select first, then activate Translate.

Steps

1. Select the geometry you want to duplicate.

2. Open the transform drop-down and pick Translate. The prompt reads:

   2 selected — [Point-to-Point mode, Copy — M: mode, C: move/copy, +/-: copies] click base point

3. Check the prompt — it should already read Copy. All three transform tools start in copy mode, so there's normally nothing to change. (C toggles it to Move, which is not what you want here.)

4. Press + to raise the copy count — the prompt shows Copy x2, Copy x3, and so on, up to 200.

5. Click a base point — a reference you'll line the copies up from. It doesn't have to be on the geometry.

6. Move the cursor. A live preview shows every copy at once, each offset by another step of the same vector. Click a destination point to commit.

Result

Each copy is independent geometry — moving or editing one has no effect on the original or the others. That's the key difference from Mirror, which links each original/copy pair with a Symmetric constraint.

Because the copies step by a repeated offset, a count of 5 gives you an evenly spaced row in one operation rather than five separate stamps.

Note: there was once a separate Copy tool

Earlier builds had a standalone Copy tool on Ctrl+D that stamped copies one click at a time. It has been removed, and its job folded into Translate's C toggle. If you're following older notes or screenshots that mention Ctrl+D, this section is the replacement.

Tip

Base and destination clicks snap to endpoints, curve points, the origin axes and the grid, so copies can land on exact relative positions rather than by eye.

How These Interact With Other Tools

• Selection colour. Both work on the current selection, which reads green while selected (see Reading Your Sketch).
• Undo. A move (drag) and a copy each undo as a single step — one Ctrl+Z reverts the whole drag or removes the whole duplicate.
• Constraints. Copied geometry is unconstrained relative to the original; if you want copies to stay related, add constraints afterward (or use Mirror, which links pairs automatically).

Next Steps

You now know how to:

• Drag geometry directly, and predict whether you'll move it or reshape it
• Recognize the fixed-geometry message and cancel a drag with Escape
• Duplicate a selection with Translate's C copy mode, and set the count with + / -
• Tell an independent copy apart from a Mirror-linked pair

The next chapter covers the drafting aids that shape how the cursor behaves while you draw — Ortho, Polar, and the grid and snap settings.

Next: Drafting Aids