Draw tool improvements

[MikeMikeJuliet]

Hello!

The draw tool needs refinement. Having used it quite extensively I have a few important changes/additions/fixes that, I argue, are essential to make the draw tool user friendly and thus faster and more efficient to use.

There are several topics regarding different wishes and discussions regarding the draw tool, but none that quite list everything needed in my opinion. I do second every one of the suggestions I found with a quick search. Links to the respective threads at the end of this post.

 

1. Absolute priority number one!: Add the ability to lock drawings
   1. As a set of drawings becomes increasingly comples and large drawings overlap, it is extremely easy to accidentally pick the wrong drawing, then move it only to realise a bit later that you just messed up a drawing, say, a circle, that you now have to eyeball to be positioned back to where it was! 
   2. When a drawing is done, the user generally does not want to move it further. Having all the drawings be there waiting like traps to be selected accidentally has lost me hours of work trying to fiddle with the tool.
2. Expansion of the draw item -list
   1. The draw item list occupies only a small set amount of screen space. With dozens of drawings having the list window as small as it currently is is a total waste of screen real-estate and makes the tool more cumbersome to use.
   2. Either have the tool resize it self according to available space, or at least give users the ability to resize the list window themselves
3. Allow arranging/filtering of drawings by name
   1. Again, as the list grows longer different items are really hard to keep track of unless one constantly arranges the items manually. This again wastes serious amounts of time that could otherwise be spent actually using the tool!
   2. I understand that the items in the draw list are in drawing order, so probably give the items a visible draw order index (per layer obviously), and then give the user the ability to order the drawings by name. Layers/categories can stay separate - those are easy to handle. 
4. Fix the item movement in the list
   1. Re-ordering the items in the list currently jumps the user to the beginning of the list! With dozens of drawings that one may want or need to arrange this is a horrible UX bug. Please fix!
5. Allow the user to change the anchor-point of text labels
   1. Often times a drawing needs to be anchored from other points than the top left corner. Plenty of texts would need to be anchored from either the middle of the text-box, or from the mid-point of either the top or the bottom edge of the text rectangle. I would recommend all the corners, edge-midpoints and the whole shape mid-point to  be added as possible anchor points to allow for most flexibility
   2. An improper anchor point makes drawings really messy and hard to look at especially when zoomed a lot from the intended viewing zoom-level, making large draw sets appear really cluttered
6. Add air navigation symbology
   1. Please add default symbology (Jeppesen or otherwise) for NAVFIXes, VORs, TACANs, DMEs, and such shapes as default triangles etc. At the current state the user has to create these by-hand which is cumbersome and unnecessary.
7. Allow drawings to be set invisible by zoom-factor
   1. A lot of the time on congested drawings some details might want to be omitted when looking at a large scenario from smaller zoom-levels (e.g. from far away). An per-drawing adjustable invisibility range  (both ends!) would really be useful for decluttering the drawing and allowing for additional details to be drawin, but only as the player zooms in enough (or out for that matter)
8. Add dedicated arc-drawing tool (with and without lines to origin)
   1. Arcs and sectors are needed to draw more complex shapes without resorting to freehand drawings constantly. A simple circle does not cover all the cases. There are, for example, a lot of airspaces that are built with several arcs IRL. Building similar airspaces with drawings currently is a time consuming process of using circles to help draw freehand - these could be bypassed by simply allowing for an arc-draw.
9. Add racetrack-shape (see "racetrack polygons in Draw function" below)
   1. I second this wish. Being able to draw racetracks would be really useful
10. Add editing, adding and removing of shape points (see "Draw Tool - point mode" post below)
    1. I second this! So many "oh whoops, wrong button!" -mistakes costing me a lot of time after making a complex shape just because I cannot edit the shapes afterwards. Definately a feature that is needed!
    2. EDIT: In fact the existing points can be moved, but more points cannot be added or removed once the shape is completed
11. Allow the user to change the amount of vertices on a circle
    1. On the same lines as point no.10. As the circles become larger the amount of vertices is really apparent and may not be sufficient in all cases. Please add a value to change the amount of vertices on a selected circle.

EDIT:

Suggestion number 12: Allow the user to set text size that is either tied to the screen size/zoom (the way it is now), but also set an absolute size, so that the text size stays the same compared to the background map and other drawings regardless of zoom. There are plenty of instances where you do not want the text to change along with zoom.

EDIT:
Added some screenshots to illustrate the points above

 

EDIT:

Added a commenter's suggestion to the list

 

EDIT:

Suggestion number 13: ability to snap route-tool waypoints to existing drawings. To make sure the route would not snap to anything-and-everything a toggle "route too snapping" for a given drawing might be wise to add, as well as to have the snapping be togglabe (much like how in vector-drawing software you can toggle snapping on and off). This way you could keep, say, waypoint symbols (see suggestion number 6) with option "route too snapping", and as you actually do your route, you could eithre allow snapping as a user, or toggle it off for completely free placement of route points. The possible points to snap to could be waypoints, text-field-anchor points (I would imagine these would most often just be left OFF by default) and any polygon/line vertex (i.e any corner point), on a per-drawing basis.

This would help out a lot on larger missions where the mission maker wants to give players a lot of possible waypoint references to be used, but not all of them are needed for any one flight. It would also ensure that a single waypoint shared between two different flights would actually be the same, instead of being approximately the same.

For additional functionality, the snapped route point could actually inherit its name from the waypoint. Here it would be best give the waypoint a third text field "route tool name", because I bet most ME users would like to name their points akin to "blue_wpts_ABCDE" instead of just ABCDE, that you would then want to show as the route name in the route tool.

 

Previously suggested improvements:

 

Regards,

MikeMikeJuliet

 

Image 1: text as intended by the author

Image 2: text and image gets cluttered because text scales with zoom

Image 3: a cluttered image when zoomed out - this could be alleviated either by being able to set some of the drawings invisible as you zoom out and/or by setting an absolute text size instead of zoom scaling text

Image 3: Unused space around the drawings list. This particular list is probably some 150 drawings long and going through it to find a specific drawing (especially if it isn't in order) wastes time completely unnecessarily.

Edited May 25 by MikeMikeJuliet
An additional suggestion, also I found a typo, edited feature request no.10, added illustrations, added feature request no.13

[Priest]

Nice list! If we're adding a locking function let's just go ahead and make that a thing for everything units, zones, drawings, yes please.

[buur]

Not only air navigation symbols are highly appreciated. Also a big need for more military symbols.

Also a good idea is to fix the text size during zooming. Otherwise the text fields get to big.

And at last point all drawings accessible via script api.

[Vähäkylä]

All the above is highly needed and would improve game maps significantly. Right now drawing in ME is difficult, slow, and even when results are achieved, aesthetically displeasing.

[pikkuhukka]

very needed features, please ed make it so

[__Timberwolf__]

I second this. Locking text at a zoom level would be extremely helpful.

[MikeMikeJuliet]

The absolute text size is a good idea! It actually crossed my mind writing the list, but there were so many items there and I was running out of time that I forgot to add it. It's edited in to the OP now. Thanks!

[Minni]

Good suggestions all around. While we're at it I'd add to the list the ability to import drawings to ingame maps (TAMMAC, TAD etc.) as Polychop did with the Kiowa. Their method isn't necessarily the most elegant when creating larger missions with multiple assets and it does require some effort but it's a proper start and shows it can be done in engine.

null

Edited May 8 by Minni

[CastorFIN]

Yes please! These would be life changing changes!

[Mad_Max2]

I like all the suggestions, but absolute text size is what brought me to this section of the forum.  I'm glad I'm not the only person frustrated with text scaling with zoom.  

Also,  I would like to suggest a "create sub-layer" type grouping system to allow grouping of drawings within a layer, that can then be shown or hidden easily with one click.  For example if I have a scenario with a mix of air and ground related drawings I could group them and easily hide the air while working on the ground, or vice versa.  Stuff like grouping all the phase lines, all the unit icons, route markers, poi's, etc.  Basically anything that you would want to group up but still have under the same "main" layer.

Edited May 25 by Mad_Max2

[MikeMikeJuliet]

On 5/24/2025 at 5:54 PM, Mad_Max2 said:

I like all the suggestions, but absolute text size is what brought me to this section of the forum.  I'm glad I'm not the only person frustrated with text scaling with zoom.  

Also,  I would like to suggest a "create sub-layer" type grouping system to allow grouping of drawings within a layer, that can then be shown or hidden easily with one click.  For example if I have a scenario with a mix of air and ground related drawings I could group them and easily hide the air while working on the ground, or vice versa.  Stuff like grouping all the phase lines, all the unit icons, route markers, poi's, etc.  Basically anything that you would want to group up but still have under the same "main" layer.

Mmm, yes, that would help manage the drawings even further in the editor. Good idea!

[MikeMikeJuliet]

I've added a new idea into the mix: request the ability to snap route-tool points to drawings (specifically waypoints as per suggestion no.6).

 

This would make setting up routes with some or all common points much simpler if the mission designer has draw a set of waypoints around the map (I sure have, as one can see in the screenshots), even when a common route-tool preset is not shared. Especially handy when you would need one or two common points without having to resort to editing an existing, but otherwise unusable set of waypoints for your flight.

 

Regards,

MikeMikeJuliet

[JaxuHali]

Hear hear! What MikeMikeJuliet said above! Pretty please, with sugar on top, make this happen.

[Morokolli]

This would be so great improvement to game! 
Please make it happen!