Canvas
Drawing on a canvas
An endless board for shapes, arrows, sticky notes and photos, saved as an ordinary document in your workspace and drawn on by everybody at once.
On this page
A canvas is a board with no edges. You draw boxes and arrows on it, stick notes to it, drop photos on it and pull the view around until the thing you are working out has a shape. It saves as you go, it is a document in your workspace like a doc or a sheet, and it is still there tomorrow.
Open Canvas from the app launcher and press New canvas. If Canvas is not in your launcher, it has not been switched on for your account yet.
The tools#
Everything lives in one bar at the bottom of the board, grouped: the pointer tools, then the shapes, then text and notes, then a plus for anything you are inserting rather than drawing. Each button shows its keyboard letter in the tooltip.
- Double-click a rectangle, ellipse, text or sticky note to type in it. Shapes carry their label inside them, so a box with a word in it is one thing, not two.
- Drag a corner handle to resize, and hold shift while you drag to keep the proportions. Lines and arrows have handles on both ends instead.
- Hold alt and drag something to leave a copy behind.
- Select several things with a drag across empty board, or by holding shift and clicking each one.
Moving around#
Scroll or swipe to pan in any direction. Pinch, or hold the command key (control on Windows and Linux) while you scroll, to zoom between 10% and 400%. The cluster at the bottom left shows the zoom level and has the two controls worth knowing: zoom to fit, which pulls the whole board into view, and the board background, which switches between dots, a grid and plain paper.
Colours, sizes and arranging#
Select something and a properties panel appears on the right of the board (at the bottom on a phone). It only shows what applies: a sticky note gets note colours, a rectangle gets a fill, a line gets a stroke. With nothing selected but a drawing tool armed, the same panel sets the style of the next thing you draw.
- Stroke and fill colour, with a custom swatch if none of the six suit you.
- Stroke width: thin, medium or bold.
- Text size from 12 px to 64 px, bold, and left, centre or right alignment.
- Arrange: bring to front, send to back, duplicate and delete.
A second set of controls covers dashed and dotted strokes, opacity, corner radius, rotation, locking something so it stops swallowing your drags, aligning and spacing a group evenly, snapping with guides, the eraser, copy and paste, and the right-click menu. If you do not see those, they have not been switched on for your account yet.
Photos, files and links on the board#
Press the plus in the toolbar, or press I, to put a photo on the board. You can also drag image files straight onto the board or paste one from your clipboard. Photos are capped at 10 MB each and count towards the storage of whoever owns the board, the same as an image in a document.
The same menu can drop three kinds of reference card: a file from your workspace, a Nemi document, and an external https link. They point at the real thing rather than copying it, so a card opens what it names. If the menu only offers a photo, reference cards have not been switched on for your account yet.
Everybody drawing at once#
A board is shared with the workspace it lives in, so anybody in that workspace can open it and draw on it. You see their cursors with their names on them, and their selections outlined, while they work. Changes merge per element, which is the right rule for a whiteboard: two people moving two shapes never fight, and two people dragging the same shape settle on whoever moved it last. Undo only ever takes back your own edits, never somebody else's.
The badge next to the board title says Saved, Saving or Reconnecting. Reconnecting means your edits are queued and retrying; wait for it to clear before you close the tab.
Limits#
| Thing | Limit |
|---|---|
| Elements on one board | 2,000 |
| Text in one shape or note | 4,000 characters |
| One photo dropped on a board | 10 MB |
| Zoom | 10% to 400% |
Boards count towards the same cap as your documents, spreadsheets and forms. See Plans for that number.
Sharing a board and getting it out#
The owner of a board can press Share to invite people by email or to switch on a link, with a choice between editing and viewing, an optional password, an optional expiry date and an option to require a Nemi account. It is the same panel Docs and Sheets use, described in Sharing and publishing.
The download button offers the board as a .nemi file, which is the file the board actually is and can be imported back into Canvas later. Rendering it out as a PNG or an SVG, including exporting just the selection, is part of the advanced set that is still rolling out.
When something is not behaving#
I cannot select a shape at all.
It is probably locked. Right-click it and choose Unlock, or select it and use the lock button at the top of the properties panel.
My board is gone from the list.
Check the workspace switcher at the top of the sidebar. Boards belong to a workspace, so a board made in one is invisible from another. Deleting a board is permanent and cannot be undone.
The board is white in dark mode.
On purpose. The paper stays light in both themes because the ink on it is the colour somebody chose, and repainting the paper dark would hide their drawing from everybody who works in light mode.
Can I work on a board on my phone?
Yes, including drawing and moving things. The properties panel becomes a sheet at the bottom instead of a column on the right. A long session is easier with a keyboard.
Related
Still stuck? Email support@nemilab.com and tell us what you were trying to do.