Writing Drill

OpenMarch has alignment tools and custom shape editing to help you write drill efficiently.

Toolbar

Coordinate Rounding

Use the Coordinate Rounding option in the toolbar to snap marchers to grid positions automatically when you move them around. Left/right click the X and Y buttons to cycle through common values, or open the menu for custom rounding.

To temporarily disable coordinate rounding, hold Shift.

Alignment Tools

The toolbar includes several alignment options:

• Lock X/Y movement - Constrain marcher movement to one axis
• Align vertical/horizontal - Line up selected marchers
• Evenly distribute vertical/horizontal - Evenly space selected marchers along the selected axis
• Copy from previous/next pages - Copy positions from adjacent pages

Selecting Multiple Marchers

• Drag to select marchers in a rectangle
• Shift + drag for lasso selection
• Ctrl/Cmd + A to select all marchers

Once you have multiple marchers selected, you can:

• Create Line - Draw a line in the inspector, then apply coordinates or group into a Shape (see below)
• Rotate - Drag the rotation handle around the selection
• Scale - Use the corner handles to expand or contract the selection

Tip

Press the 1 key (snap to nearest whole) to round the coordinates after manipulating multiple marcher positions, while all the marchers are still selected. (does not work for shapes yet)

Shapes

After creating a shape from selected marchers, you can build more complex formations.

• Copy - Apply the shape to previous or next pages
• Ungroup - Break the shape back into individual marchers
• Segments
  • Line - Straight line
  • Single/double curve, Curved lines
  • Move - Set a new position to start the next segment from
  • Close - Connect the back to the first

The delete button removes the last segment from your shape.

Shape segment handles also apply to your coordinate rounding settings, to temporarily disable coordinate rounding, hold Shift.

Quick Workflow

1. Select your marchers
2. Create a line or shape using the inspector
3. Fine-tune with alignment tools
4. Use snap to nearest whole (1 key) to snap marcher positions to the grid
5. Copy to other pages as needed, and work on your next set

These are the main tools for writing drill in OpenMarch currently.