This is the toolbox, it’s where you select the painting tool you intend to use. The shape of the toolbox changes depending on the available vertical space; on large monitors, it has two columns but may be three or four columns on smaller monitors. A close look will reveal that tools that are related are placed together. To select a tool, just click on the appropriate toolbox button. Experimentation is key to learning how to use Chasys Draw IES Artist, so try using all the available tools to see what they do. Details on the operations of the tools are discussed under Tools.

Some tools have styles, and will show you a pop-up with style options when you select them. You can skip the pop-up by right-clicking the tool, in which case the default (or last used) style will be applied. There’s an option to invert this logic too. If the Show Style Anchors option is set under View > Toolbox, tools that have styles will have a small arrow displayed under them on the bottom-right corner.

If your mouse has three buttons instead of two, do the following: choose three or more tools, one after the other, noting which tools you have chosen. Move the mouse over the picture (don’t click any mouse button yet). Now press the middle mouse button while looking at the cursor. What happens? Press it again. What happens? As you have seen, clicking the middle mouse button (or pressing the click-wheel) toggles the current tool with the most recently used tool; pressing it again reverses the change. This can also be accomplished by pressing the Tab key on the keyboard.

The toolbox supports Quick-Select, which allows you to select tools by pressing just one key on the keyboard. The key associated with a tool is displayed to the upper left of the tool icon if the Show Shortcuts option is set under View > Toolbox, and can be configured to the user’s preference. You can customize the mappings of quick-select from the Configure > Shortcut Keys menu; here’s the configuration window shown by that option:

You may have noticed that some letters (X, Y and A) are displayed using a different color. This is to remind you that these keys are also used as shortcuts for the restriction modes; when these modes are displayed, they will take precedence over quick-select.