So far we’ve covered building your Symbol Library and using Autotrace to turn images into vectors. This episode is all about text — placing it, styling it, running it along a path, and organizing it into tables.
What You’ll Learn:
canvasxdraw’s text tools will feel familiar if you’ve used other authoring software, but they come with the same precision and flexibility canvasxdraw applies to everything else. Beyond basic placement and styling, canvasxdraw lets you flow text along a path and build fully editable tables directly in your document — no need to import static charts from another program.
Watch: Text Tools Instructional Video
Quick Recap:
Placing and Styling Text
Prefer to skim before you watch? Here’s the step-by-step:
1. Select the Text tool and draw a rectangle wherever you want to write, using the properties bar to set it up.
2. Style and align as needed. Select any text to align it with other elements and adjust its styling.
3. Change the font and other typographic details right from the properties bar.
4. Control every ink. Adjust the text ink, background ink, outline ink, and text box ink independently, and manage line thickness by clicking the pen icon.
Writing Along a Path
1. Choose the Path Text tool.
2. Click the object you want to write along, any line or shape.
3. Adjust the styling and type along the line. Once you’re happy with the result, you can delete the original path object and the text stays exactly where you placed it.
Building Tables
1. Select the Table tool to create and edit tables of information directly in your document.
2. Add or remove columns and rows from the properties bar as your data changes.
3. Style individual elements, like column headers, independently from the rest of the table.
One workflow tip from the video: if you’re doing detailed text work, keep the Text palette open (Window > Palette Type) for quick changes without hunting through menus.
Why It’s Worth Knowing
Text and tables show up in nearly every technical illustration and design deliverable; labels, callouts, legends, data tables, spec sheets. Having full control over styling, path text, and table structure inside canvasxdraw means you’re not exporting to a separate layout program just to finish a document.
Haven’t tried canvasxdraw yet? See what precision without compromise feels like.
This post is part of our canvasxdraw How-To video series. Have a feature you want us to cover next? Let us know.