Applies to: Administrator, Teacher, Students, Co-student, Guest with access
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We uses Excalidraw, a collaborative whiteboard for taking notes and creating diagrams for lectures. Its main appeal is its simplicity and ease of collaboration. It can also be used for design to quickly create simple graphics.
Basic Features
- Freehand Drawing: Allows users to freely draw with pencil, pen, and highlighter tools to express their ideas creatively.
- Shape Creation: Users can easily create basic shapes such as circles, squares, and polygons to organize information clearly.
- Insert Text: Excalidraw supports adding text to the drawing board to explain details or annotate created components.
- Real-time Collaboration: Users can invite others to the project to edit and share ideas, helping to improve teamwork and promote creative thinking.
- Save and Export Files: Projects can be saved as files for later work or exported to various formats for sharing and presentation.
Collaboration & Export
In the top right box, you can export your whole drawing either as a file to load back into Excalidraw or as an image. You can press the ‘Live Collaboration’ button to start a session.
Once you start a session, you can copy a link which gives anybody access to real-time collaboration on your current board.
When any member leaves the session, they ‘take a version with them’, which they can keep editing locally.
If you want to keep your whiteboard and re-use it later, you can save it either as an Excalidraw file (editable later) or an image file.
Libraries
You can also import libraries of icons made in Excalidraw using the book icon at the top of the screen (to the right of the other tools). There are only a few libraries available right now, but it can be useful for common icon sets.
Here's for a bit more details to Excalidraw
Getting Started
You'll be presented with a blank canvas. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the user interface.
As you can see this is the white canvas or better the whiteboard that you will be working on.
Basic Drawing
To start drawing, simply click and drag your cursor on the canvas. Excalidraw uses a simple and minimalist drawing style.
Use the top right toolbar to select different shapes, such as rectangles, circles, lines, arrows, and text.
Experiment with the various drawing tools and options to get comfortable with their functionality.
Further Drawing Features Comment
- Layering: Arrange elements in front or behind others using the "Move to Front" and "Move to Back" options in the context menu (right-click on an object).
- Duplication: Copy an object by selecting it and choosing "Duplicate" in the context menu. This is handy when you want to create multiple similar shapes.
- Grouping: Select multiple objects by dragging a selection box around them. Right-click and choose "Group" to treat them as a single entity. You can also select multiple items and then click shift and keep clicking on the other figures to group them all.
- Alignment and Distribution: Use the alignment and distribution tools to organize your elements neatly. Select multiple objects, right-click, and choose the desired option (e.g., align horizontally, distribute vertically)
Customization
Customize the appearance of your drawings using the right sidebar options. Choose different stroke widths, colors, and opacity levels for your drawings.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Excalidraw offers several keyboard shortcuts to speed up your workflow. Press "?" on your keyboard to view the list of available shortcuts.
Some common shortcuts include "V" for selecting the pointer tool, "R" for creating rectangles, "A" for arrows, and "T" for adding text.
Export and Sharing
To save your drawing, click on the button with the 3 lines on the top left corner. You can export or save your work on Alkemio on in your files or just press the save botton on the bottom right.
