Draft Pattern (draft view)

The Pattern Editors draft view is where you will end up spending most of your time.

Purpose of the draft view

To appreciate the significance of the draft view, it’s good to know what makes a FreeSewing pattern:

The diagram above helps us understand the Editor’s priorities:

• First it will prompt you for the design you want to use (using the designs view)
• Then it will ensure we have all required measurements (using the measurements view)
• Finally it will ask you how exactly you would like your pattern (using the draft view)

In other words, the goal of the draft view is to let your customize your pattern. To make that intuitive, it will show you a live preview of what your patterns looks like.

Layout of the draft view

On Desktop

A screenshot of the FreeSewing editor in draft view, on a desktop, with various areas highlighted.

On Tablet

A screenshot of the FreeSewing editor in measurements view, on a tablet, with various areas highlighted.

On Mobile

A screenshot of the FreeSewing editor in measurements view, on mobile, with various areas highlighted.

• The draft view has the ribbon area at the top where we will find:
  • The view menu (not view-specific, it is the one with the Draft pattern label)
  • The view-specific menus, including:
    • The Design Options menu (highlighted in orange with the Aaron Options label, because our example uses the Aaron design
    • The Core Settings menu (highlighted in yellow)
    • The UI Preferences menu (highlighted in green)
    • The Flags menu
    • Icons to toggle certain Core Settings (highlighted in the same yellow as the Core Settings menu
    • Icons to toggle certain UI Preferences (highlighted in the same green as the UI Preferences menu
    • The undo icons as well as the undo menu (highlighted in lavender)
    • The restore icons (highlighted in teal)
    • The save, save as, and export icons (highlighted in gray)
• In the main working area, we have:
  • The pattern area on the left (highlighted in red)
    • The zoom and rotate icons inside the pattern area, anchored at the top right (highlighted in mint)
  • The aside area on the right, holding:
    • The Design Options menu (highlighted in orange, same as in the ribbon area)
    • The Core Settings menu (highlighted in yellow, same as in the ribbon area)
    • The UI Preferences menu (highlighted in green, same as in the ribbon area)

tip

Refer to the documentation on the Editor areas and Editor menus to more in-depth info about each of these.

note

Not all menus are available on mobile, but all features are.

Caveats of the draft view

The pattern area implements its own pan, scroll, and zoom logic that allows you to scroll, pan, and zoom the SVG pattern.

When this area takes up most of the screen, this can cause confusion when you try to scroll the page, but in reality you are scrolling the pattern.

You can use the zoom and rotate icons anchored at the top-right to zoom if you find that work better for you.