# Marker Tool

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Use the Marker tool to place marks in your sketch.

• | Call attention to its geometric features by placing angle markers and tick marks.

• | Create a drawing to embellish your sketch and emphasize important elements.

| Create an Angle Marker

Use the Marker tool to create an angle marker in either of two ways.
• | Press the vertex of an angle and drag into the interior of the angle. If several angles overlap, drag farther to select wider angles.
• | Press the initial side of the angle and drag to the other side of the angle.
When you use either of these methods, the pointer changes shape when it’s over an object on which you can press and drag. (You can also use these two methods, while you're editing a caption, to create an angle marker and insert a Hot Text link to the angle.) Once you’ve created an angle marker, you can change its appearance:
• | Click it with the Marker tool to change the number of strokes it displays.
• | Use the the Display menu to change the Point Style, Line Style, or Color.
• | Use its Marker properties to change the Angle definition.
• | Use its Opacity properties to change the transparency of the sector.

| Create a Tick Mark

Click the Marker tool on a path to create a tick mark. The path can be a straight object, a circle, an arc, the perimeter of a polygon or other interior, a point locus, or a function plot. Once you’ve created a tick mark, you can change its appearance:
• | Click it with the Marker tool to change the number of strokes it displays.
• | Drag it with the Marker tool to move it to a different location along its path.
• | Use the the Display menu to change its Line Style or Color.
• | Use its Marker properties to change its Tick mark style to show a crossbar, an open arrow, a hollow arrow, or a solid arrow.

| Create a Drawing

Press the Marker tool in white space and drag to draw in your sketch. You can add handwritten text, emphasize existing objects, sketch approximate functions or curves, or make any kind of drawing you like. A drawing created with the Marker tool behaves like any other picture in your sketch, and so you can select, relocate, resize, and even transform it.
• | To create a drawing, press and drag in a location that doesn’t trigger special marking behavior. Empty space always works as a starting point for a drawing. (Starting on a straight object or on the vertex of an angle will produce a tick mark or an angle marker rather than a drawing.)
• | When you draw several ink strokes one after the other, they all become part of the same drawing object in Sketchpad. If you want to create separate pictures, start a new picture by pressing Esc or by clicking the Marker tool again.
• | When you draw ink using a SMART Board pen, the ink color is determined by the color of the SMART Board pen.
• | If you use a pressure-sensitive tablet, stylus, or electronic whiteboard, vary the pressure you apply to the Marker tool to control the width of its ink.
• | Use Edit | Preferences | Tools to set the type and width of ink. Use Display | Color to set the color of the ink.
• | To erase ink while creating a drawing, hold the Shift key and move over the ink you want to erase. To help identify what ink is erasable, a purple rectangle indicates the bounds of the current ink session, and everything else in the rectangle appears faded. You cannot erase ink that has already been turned into a drawing.
• | To erase when using a SMART Board, you can also use the eraser (or your open hand with a board that can recognize hand gestures) with no need to hold the Shift key.
• | After you draw a shape, you can define it as a function and then evaluate it, use it to define other functions, and so forth. If the drawing doubles back on itself, failing the vertical-line test, the value of the function is based on the highest part of the drawing.
• | (Mac 5.1 only) The Marker tool now produces pressure-sensitive ink, if your hardware supports it.