Select & transform — Moving, scaling and flipping objects

How do I select an object?

Switch to Select on the tool rail, then tap an object on the canvas — its inspector opens automatically (a run/satin/fill/blend inspector depending on its kind) and handles appear around it.

Select stays on when you tap it again. With Nodes on, that tap switches the nodes off and leaves you with the plain selection. Back to drawing: tap a Stitch on the tool rail, or double-tap the Pencil.

A small cross marks the centre of the selection frame — the point Align, Rotate and Flip work from — so a symmetric layout can be placed by eye against the rulers and the hoop’s axes. It is a mark, not a grip.

The tap goes to the object under the finger, not to whatever was stitched last near it: a small detail on a large fill gets the tap, a contour line that merely runs past the spot does not. What lies on top at that spot wins: a satin column or a fill hides whatever was stitched before it underneath, so a column you drew over an imported letter gets the tap, not the letter beneath it. A line merely passing by hides nothing, and neither does a fill that lies under the motif. What is hidden is still there for the tap-again cycle below. Where several objects really do lie on top of each other, tap the same spot again to dig one layer deeper — every further tap goes one down the stack, then round again. The reach of a tap is a fingertip on the screen, however far you are zoomed in or out.

How do I select more than one object?

Drag out a marquee across the canvas. Selection is shape-aware rather than purely bounding-box based, so a marquee that just grazes a ring’s bounding box (like the empty middle of a letter “O”) won’t accidentally pull it in.

What can I do with the on-canvas handles?

• Drag inside the shape — move it
• Drag a corner handle — scale uniformly
• Drag an edge handle — stretch along a single axis only (available on Fill, Run and Satin objects)
• Rotate handle — rotate freely, with snap points every 15° (off together with Snap)
• Flip — a tap on one of the two icons under the selection mirrors it horizontally or vertically

None of these are sliders in a panel — they’re all direct manipulation on the canvas itself, which is why there’s no separate “Transform” menu to look for.

Which handle wins when several lie close together?

The nearest. With two handles under your finger, the one you are closer to takes the drag.

• The middle belongs to moving. On a small selection the handles lie so close that they would cover the whole shape. So the middle third of the frame always moves it. The handles of a small selection are taken from outside.
• A ring on a corner. The green circle of the entry point often sits right on a corner of the frame of an open line. From outside the frame you take the corner there, from inside the ring.
• A tap is a tap. Flip fires when the finger lifts, not when it touches down. Drag away first and nothing happens. The green and the red circle and the baseline’s dot follow only once you really drag. A tap on them changes nothing.

Put a second finger down to zoom or pan, and the first finger no longer counts as a grab.

Do my stitch settings change when I scale something?

No — the geometry scales and the plan is re-generated, so density, stitch length and pull compensation stay the physical millimetres you set and the stitch count adapts by itself.

A satin band keeps its width too, as long as that width is a setting rather than the drawing: scale a 3 mm star up by half and it is still a 3 mm band around a bigger star. The exception is a band whose width is the artwork — a pressure-drawn stroke, per-node widths from the Points tool, and lettering — where the width scales with the shape. See Satin.

One thing to watch: scaling a 3D Puff section can push its columns out of the foam band it was set up for. The app says so in a message and tells you which width it now wants.

How do I get something straight again?

The rotation handle measures the dominant edge direction of what you’ve selected — for a rectangle all four edges agree on the answer — and its snap points sit where that direction lands on a multiple of 15°, plumb included. So a rectangle you drew 3° crooked clicks straight at −3°, not at some multiple of the angle you happened to start dragging from.

While you drag, a badge on the handle reads the selection’s deviation from plumb, not the angle you’ve turned so far: drag until it says 0, and at the level stop it says Level outright. That one stop grabs harder than its neighbours (±4° against ±2.5°) because it’s the one people are hunting for. Drag on and you override any of them — the snap forgives near-misses, it doesn’t insist.

Three more ways, all in Align:

• Straighten — one tap, with the measured skew on the label (“Straighten (−3.2°)”). It’s also on a double-tap of the rotation handle, which additionally opens a keypad for typing an exact angle.
• Straighten to “Name” — appears when a multi-selection of up to three pieces contains pieces that are crooked by different amounts; with more pieces only Straighten each is offered. It levels the whole selection rigidly by the named piece’s skew, so a motif punched into a rectangle turns with its rectangle and keeps its registration. You name the plumb that matters; StitchPencil doesn’t average.
• Straighten each — the opposite choice for the same situation: every piece onto its own plumb, each about its own center, so nothing moves out of place. A group counts as one piece — a word is never taken apart.

How StitchPencil knows what straight is. Where it is known, nothing is measured: text, library shapes and everything imported (SVG, stitch file, picture) arrive upright, and every object carries its “upright” through each rotation and flip — through To paths too — and hands it on to its borders. A heart, a script or an italic word has no edge a skew could be read from, and the zigzag of imported stitches points along the stitches, not the shape; they still straighten by exactly the angle they were turned. Only what never had an upright is measured — a freely drawn line or shape, on its dominant edge direction. Text on a curved baseline has no plumb as a whole, and there is no straightening for it. A single letter of live text can be moved, not turned; after Convert to paths it straightens like any object.

When the selection has no shared direction, the handle stops promising one: no absolute snap points, no Level badge. A circle has no edge direction at all and doesn’t get a vote either way.

Can I type an exact angle?

Double-tap the rotation handle. A small pad opens right at the grip: a keypad for the degrees to turn by (with a sign, so −7.5 turns the other way), and above it a Straighten button carrying the measured skew when the selection has a direction to measure. It is the same keypad the sliders use, so a number you type is a number you get.

Can I type an exact size?

Yes, in two places with the same entry:

• Double-tap a corner handle. The keypad opens at the grip; the opposite corner stays where it is.
• In the inspector, under the name, the Size line shows width × height. A tap opens the same entry, and the scale is then about the centre.

Pick Width or Height and type the value in your design’s unit. The lock keeps the proportions: closed, the other dimension follows; open, only the typed one changes. These are the same two operations the handles perform, so everything that holds there holds here: text scales as text (and only becomes paths on a one-sided stretch), a satin band whose width is a setting keeps it, and finished stitches stay within their limit — a message says so when the typed value cannot be reached for that reason. Unlike a handle, which reads tiny movements as a tap, a typed value lands exactly, also for a satin band whose frame does not grow in step with its centreline. One typed value is one step in undo.

Does the grid do anything, or is it just drawn?

With the grid on (gear icon → Grid), a moved selection catches the grid lines. The reference is the selection box’s lower-left corner, one per axis, and the catch reaches a quarter of the grid spacing — at most half a millimetre, and never more than a fixed, short distance on the screen. So a fine grid catches finely and leaves room to move freely between the lines, zoomed in the line lets go sooner, and every catch puts the edge on a line rather than somewhere between two. Keep dragging and you slide past it. Turning the grid off makes it purely visual again.

How finely can I move with a finger or the Pencil?

As finely as you zoom in. A drag begins once the Pencil has travelled a short way across the screen (a finger a little further, because it wobbles more). Until then the selection stays put, so that a tap does not turn into a move. From then on it follows, and it stays where you let go — even if that is a tenth of a millimetre beside where it started.

How much that is on the fabric depends on the zoom: about a millimetre at 100 %, a fifth of that at 400 %. For an exact amount there is still Nudge.

What are the lines that appear while I drag?

Guides. While a selection is moved, it catches on two things: the axes of the hoop and the objects around it. Like catches like: the selection’s centre on a neighbour’s centre, its edges on the neighbour’s edges. On the hoop’s axes both the centre and the edges catch. As soon as something has caught, a line across the canvas shows what. A vertical and a horizontal line can stand at the same time; each direction catches on its own.

The reach is a fixed distance on the screen, never more than 1 mm. Zoomed far in it is only a tenth of a millimetre, and placing by eye is free; zoomed out it catches what a finger could not tell apart anyway. Keep dragging and the selection glides past the line. If an edge and the centre are equally close to a line, the centre wins.

Only what is on the screen is caught on. A group and a word count as one frame, the way their handles are drawn; a border or contour that follows the dragged word travels with it and does not catch. Hidden layers do not catch. If the grid is on as well, the guide goes first: in the direction in which it has caught, the grid leaves the selection alone.

Among many neighbours almost every place is close to some line, and a small part can then hardly be put where it belongs. That is what Snap is for, the icon with two arrows at a line at the front of the zoom bar. When it is off, nothing pulls: neither guide nor grid, and the rotation handle no longer stops at the 15° steps — it turns exactly as far as your finger goes, 28° stays 28°. The lines still appear as soon as an edge or the centre comes near them, and you see whether you are on the line or beside it. The selection lands exactly where you put it. The switch stays the way you set it, across launches too.

To hide the lines as well, switch them off in Settings: Show guides.

How do I measure a distance on the canvas?

With the ruler, the symbol beside Snap in the zoom bar. Tap it, then two points on the canvas — a tap near a node, a tip or a corner snaps to it, so you measure from the tip itself. A line joins the two, and beside it stands the distance in your unit and the angle of the line — 0° is level, 90° upright, as the fill angle is given. A third tap begins the next measurement there. The taps select nothing and move nothing — the selection’s frame and grips stand down meanwhile; Done or any other tool ends measuring. You measure what you tap — for the size of a whole object, the inspector shows it at the top.

How do I move something by an exact amount?

Nudge — in the Selection Action Bar and in the object’s action grid. It opens a small arrow pad that stays put while you work: four directions, the step size in the middle, and the distance you’ve moved so far on the line underneath.

• Tap the middle to change the step: 0.1 / 1 / 5 mm (0.01 / 0.05 / 0.25 in on an inch design). 0.1 mm is deliberately the finest rung — that’s the grid machine files are written on, so it’s the smallest move that survives the export.
• Hold an arrow to repeat, rather than tapping thirty times.
• The whole session is one undo step. Nudge a dozen times, press undo once, and the object is back where it started. Pause for a moment and the next nudge begins a fresh step, so you can also unwind in stages.

The pad works on whatever a drag would move: a single object, a drilled-down group member, a whole group, a multi-selection, or a reference image.

How do I center an object?

Align, in the same two places. At the top is the row In the hoop: Center puts the selection in the middle of the hoop, On vertical line slides it sideways onto the vertical centre line, On horizontal line up or down onto the horizontal one — the grey axes on the canvas, the lines the symbols show. A multi-selection moves as one block; its parts keep their places relative to each other. If it is already there, nothing moves and a brief message says so.

Below them, if the selection is sitting on top of something, there’s an entry for each object underneath, named: “Center on “Fill 1””. StitchPencil doesn’t pick one for you — a guess about position is one you’d have to check every time, so the menu says which object it means and you choose. When nothing lies underneath, that part of the menu simply isn’t there.

Centering means the object’s bounding box — the same box whose handles you see on the canvas, so what you grab is what gets centered. On a strongly asymmetric shape (a crescent, a comma) that isn’t the same as its visual balance point; it is, however, what every drawing tool means by “center”, and the one you can predict.

How do I get two objects onto the same height?

Two short placement lines, left and right of the motif, drawn by hand and not quite level: centering doesn’t help, because it moves both onto the hoop’s center line. For this, Align has its own section as soon as more than one part is selected: Align to “Line 1”, one entry per part, each named.

The named part stays put. Everything else moves onto its edge or center, in one axis only: Left, Vertical or Right; Top, Horizontal or Bottom. Vertical and Horizontal mean the centres: they land on a vertical or a horizontal line, as the symbol shows. For the two lines that means: select both, Align to “Line 1”, Horizontal. The second line slides onto the height of the first, and nothing else moves.

Which part sets the measure is stated in the entry, not decided by the order you tapped. A marquee has no “first” selection, and a key object you’d have to nominate with an extra tap is one nobody finds. A group and a word count as one part and move as a whole. The measure is the bounding box, the same as for centering. One undo step, and a brief message names the part you aligned to.

How do I align several objects to each other, with none of them staying put?

Align → Align, as soon as more than one part is selected. The measure here is the frame around the whole selection: Left moves every part to the left edge of that frame, Vertical puts each centre on the frame’s vertical centre line, and so on for all six entries. The part that already lies furthest left does not move; the others come to it. Four words under each other are flush left in one tap.

If a particular part should set the measure, use the entry with its name instead (Align to “Line 1”).

Two things hold for everything under Align: a locked layer is never moved. It can be what the others line up on, no more. And a word with a border or contour that follows it counts as one part together with them; what is lined up is the outer edge of the two.

How do I space objects evenly?

From three selected parts on, Align has two more entries: Distribute horizontally (side by side) and Distribute vertically (one under the other).

The two outermost parts stay where they are. The parts between them move so that the gap from edge to edge is the same everywhere. With parts of different sizes that is not the same as equal distances between centres, but it is what looks even on the fabric: there is as much air between a long word and a short one as between two short ones. Nothing moves in the other direction. For four clean lines, use both in turn: first Align → Left, then Distribute vertically.

How do I give objects the same width or height?

Inside the entry Align to “Name”, below the six alignments, are Same width and Same height. The named part stays as it is. Every other part is scaled about its own centre until its width (or height) is that of the named one.

The scaling is uniform: the other dimension grows in the same proportion. A circle stays round, and a word stays text at another size instead of being stretched and thereby turned into paths. Two parts with different proportions end up with the same width, not the same height. For the stitches the same holds as for any scaling: density and stitch length stay, the stitch count follows. One step in Undo, however many parts were scaled.

What if the object I’m centering is bigger than the one underneath?

It still centers — and StitchPencil says so afterwards, because the object you aligned to has just disappeared under the one you moved. A brief message names it; undo is right there if that wasn’t what you wanted. Objects of the same size don’t trigger it (blend layers are copies of one another, so “larger” would be untrue of them).

How do I repeat something in a circle or in a grid?

Repeat in the Selection Action Bar (for a single object under More). The panel has two tabs, and the canvas shows the copies dashed before they exist.

Circle

• Number in the circle — the selection counts: “6 in the circle” is the selection and five copies.
• Radius — the distance from the centre of the circle to the centre of the selection. If the selection lies beside the centre of the hoop, the radius starts at exactly that distance, and the circle runs around the hoop’s centre. If it lies on the centre, the circle lies below it.
• Turn the copies — on: each copy is turned as it goes round, like the petals of a flower. Off: every copy stays upright, like the numerals on a clock.

The selection stays where it is, at the top of its circle.

Grid

• Side by side and under each other — how many in a row, and how many rows.
• Gap across and Gap down — the space between two copies, edge to edge.
• Offset every second row — moves every second row by half a step, like bricks in a wall.

The selection is the top-left one; the grid grows to the right and downward.

If copies would land outside the hoop, the panel says how many. They can be made all the same.

Two special cases: a section on embroidery foam gets its copies onto the same piece of foam, because a design carries one. And an outline with a sashiko lattice is copied as a pair, each lattice belonging to its copied outline. Hidden layers are not copied.

The copies are layers of their own and sew after the original, in the order in which they lie in the circle or the grid. Nothing links them: change one and the others stay as they are. So finish the shape before repeating it. Afterwards the original and its copies are selected together, ready to be moved or grouped as one. All of it is one step in Undo.

What is the small green circle on my selected object?

That’s the entry point — the spot where the machine starts stitching this object, and therefore where its one visible seam ends up. It shows on every selected object, right on the outline.

• A hollow ring means StitchPencil picked the spot for you. It aims for the shortest sensible travel from wherever the previous object finished.
• A filled circle means you pinned it yourself.

How do I move where an object starts stitching?

Drag the green circle along the outline. It snaps to the nearest point on the shape — including the edge of a hole, if you drag it there — and pins itself where you let go. The whole drag is a single undo step.

This matters most on closed shapes. A hexagon, a ring, a letter O has no natural start, so the seam lands wherever the geometry happens to begin — which is often a corner, exactly where it shows. Drag the entry to the middle of an edge, or to a spot another object will later cover, and the seam disappears into the design.

How do I get the automatic entry point back?

Select the object, open More in the Selection Action Bar, and choose Reset start and end. The option only appears while an entry or an exit is actually pinned. After that the circle goes hollow again and StitchPencil picks the spot for you as before.

What does “Copy style” take along?

The object’s stitch settings, in five groups that can be switched on and off one by one: Stitch (density, length, width, angle, passes, pull compensation), Underlay, Caps, Machine (tie-in and tie-off, thread to the next object) and Thread color.

What exists for one kind of object only travels between objects of that kind: a fill’s satin edge and length variation to other fills, a satin column’s fading to other columns. That gives a word converted to paths its satin edge in one go: set it on the first letter, copy the style, select the others, paste the style. A style from a column leaves a fill’s satin edge as it is.

What hangs on the shape is not copied: flow lines, zones, carve lines and embroidery foam.

What’s in the Selection Action Bar?

A small floating bar near your selection, holding what a hand reaches for while drawing: Nodes, Knife, Convert, Align, More, and Nudge beyond the divider. On a single object it is those six whatever you selected — the bar does not change length under your hand.

Everything you decide once per motif sits behind More, in sections: first Contour and Repeat, then Copy and Paste style and Reset start and end, then what only some objects offer — Overlaps first, then Holes, Zones and Punch, Border, Blend and Sashiko, and Fit under.

Groups and multiple selections have their own bars, cut the same way: a few tiles, the rest behind More.

• Group: Convert, Align, Ungroup, Join, More. Behind More: Contour, Repeat, Thread to next object and style, then Merge, Punch, Border and Blend.
• Several layers: Group, Join, Align, More. Behind More: Contour, Repeat, Convert, Thread to next object and Paste style, then Merge, Intersect, Angle and Punch.

A tile or an entry is missing where it does not apply to the selection: Join, for one, only exists for layers of the same stitch kind.

Nothing is bar-only: the object inspector shows every one of these as a tile in its action grid, which is the better place to browse when you are looking for something rather than reaching for it.

In what order do the actions appear?

In the same one everywhere: in the bar, behind More and in the inspector’s action grid. First the tiles every object has, always in the same place: Nodes, Knife, Convert, Align, Contour, then Repeat, Copy style, Paste style and Delete. Under a thin line follow the ones only some objects offer: first Overlaps, which satins and fills share, then on a fill Holes, Zones, Punch, Border, Blend, Sashiko and Fit under. So Convert sits in the same spot whatever you selected. Paste style keeps its place even with nothing copied; it shows faint then, and a tap says what to do. A surface leaves out what does not apply there. It never reorders.

The menus read the same everywhere too, top to bottom, whether they open upward or downward. Convert offers the same things everywhere: the stitch kinds (on a fill, Satin is called Satin border), Satin column along the middle, on a single fill also Satin area, and behind them 3D Puff, Trapunto and Appliqué. See Cut, combine & convert for what each one does.