2 min read

Sending sketches forward and backward in Freeform

A while back I wrote about Freeform as the best iPad sketching app. I still stand by that. That said, I’ve got a bunch of issues I’d love to see improved in the software.

One of my biggest issues was:

Moving objects to front and back

Freeform has a feature to select a group of objects and move them all the way from the front or to the back. Though I’d wish for a bit more fine grained control, such as move back and move forward (instead of all the way back or forward) I’d be happy with the feature if it actually worked. Half of the time the button is grayed out, without any indication of why. My closest guess is Freeform loses track of the layer state of drawings that when you create large groups of objects, duplicate them, and then leave the file and return. When it doesn’t work I have to fiddle with it, redraw things, and hope and pray that I can just get that one background to show up behind a drawing.

When you select an object or group of objects Freeform places a popup toolbar with options for duplicating, deleting, etc. This is separate from the buttons in the floating toolbar where you can move objects forward and backward.

In the selection popup there’s a small chevron arrow. Pressing that shows a few more options, including a separate button.

When you select separate the menu changes again to a different popout menu. Selecting the elipsis on this menu will show a back and forward option. Pressing back on that one will truly respect what you want and move the object to the back of the artboard.

Now, if you separate something the separate option will disappear entirely and be replaced by a merge option.

I’m guessing this is similar to a group button in every other design tool I’ve used. But the labels are confusing, the fact that it changes from separate to merge doesn’t make sense, and all of this took me far too long to discover.

I’ve know about this feature for a while, but didn’t quite recognize what it was doing. I’d occasionally stumble on the separate menu, but didn’t realize that its back button had a separate treatment from the standard back button.

It’s a mess.

All that said, by jumping through those loopholes I can finally move something to back, a feature that comes up quite often in design.

Say, for example, that you sketch out a screen and then decide you need to put a background color behind it, then add more details, then want to make sure that the details are above the background but below the original lines. Having the ability to select sections and move them forward or backward is critical.

And, because I can’t see the layer order, I never quite know where objects stand in the nesting of layers.

Thankfully I have a workaround now where I can do what I need. But it’s an odd choice.

Next thing I’m hoping for is a way to rotate. I think it exists, but I haven’t figured it out yet.