Diagramming in Freehand

Making flowcharts and diagrams is a breeze with Freehand. Effortlessly create and connect shapes, and have the connectors dynamically follow the shapes as you move them around the canvas.

Creating basic shapes

1. Click the Shape tool and select the type of shape you need: square, circle, diamond, parallelogram, pill, triangle, line, or arrow.
2. Click anywhere on the canvas and drag your mouse to add a shape.

You can learn more about the available tools in Freehand in this article: Freehand tools.

Entering text in shapes

1. If needed, create a new shape.
2. Double-click the shape where you want to enter text.
3. Type the text in the shape.
4. Click anywhere outside the shape to finish typing.

You won't be able to add text to shapes that were created before June 2021, when this feature was released. However, you can add text to any newly created shapes (except lines and arrows).

Connecting shapes

1. Select the starting shape.
2. Choose one of the four connector dots as the starting point of the connector (left, right, top, or bottom of the starting shape).
   

   You can also create a connector by typing L on your keyboard.

3. Click again to drop the end of the arrow at the desired location. You can choose to connect to the left, right, top, or bottom of the end shape. Drop the end of the connector at the center of the end shape to have it dynamically snapping between the two shapes.  

You can also create connected shapes quickly by dropping the end of a new connector on the freehand canvas; this will open a menu that will allow you to create a new shape at the end of the connector.

Changing the start or end location 

1. Select the connector
2. Drag the start or the end of the connector to the new location.

Editing connectors

In the contextual menu that appears when the connector is selected:

• Click Color () to edit the color of the connector.
• Click Weight and style () to edit the weight and style of the connector.
• Click Line caps () to edit the start and end caps of the connectors.
• Click Lock () to prevent the connector from being selected or edited.