Think of the Designer main window as an electronic drawing board. There are certain areas of the window that always display the same information or options. For example, the left side of the window always shows the toolbox, and the top of the window always shows the menus.
If you are new to Designer, use this section to help identify the major areas of the Designer window.
The toolbox, found at the left of the main Designer window, contains tools that let you create and edit drawings. There is also a View Tool that lets you view your drawing at different sizes.
When you click a tool in the toolbox, the ribbon at the top of the window usually changes to show buttons that let you specify how you want to use the tool. For example, if you want to draw a rectangle, you click the Rectangle Tool in the toolbox then select the way you want to draw the rectangle from the ribbon.
The menus are found in the menu bar at the top of the window (under the title bar). These menus generally contain commands and options that let you perform a variety of actions.
The menus are grouped by category. For example, the Effects menu contains commands that change the appearance of your drawing.
Different documents appear in separate windows within the Designer main window. You can display many windows at a time, but only the active drawing window receives the action. For example, when you save a drawing, only the one in the active window is saved.
The rulers and grid points appear for each open document to help you measure and position the components of your drawing. You can set Designer's preferences to show or hide the rulers and grid, change the unit of measure for the rulers, and change the spacing of the grid points.
Designer provides several kinds of hints to help you in your work. As you point to a button, command, or tool, a hint provides a brief description of that particular element. A keyboard shortcut is often included.
You can show or hide the various types of hints. You can also undock, move, resize, and reshape the floating hint window to keep it visible but out of your way.