A Complete Guide for Using Gravit – A Linux-Based Design Tool

Are you tired of seeing those age-old graphical representations on your desktop running on Linux operating system (OS)? If yes, then probably the lack of professional graphic design applications is the main reason behind your disappointment. If it is like that then, don’t panic or feel frustrated as you now have an amazing tool to unleash your creativity. Undoubtedly, many tech geeks prefer Gimp and CAD solutions for catering designing needs, but they are not always handy as user’s demands and preferences changes too often. For users who love vector drawing, LinuxOS has come up with a new app - Gravit that serves as an excellent alternative to Fireworks, Adobe Freehand, and similar designing programs. 

The open source software supports multiple operating systems and is available for free to empower the user created designs with great versatility, fluidity, and elegance. If you also want to give this designing tool a shot, follow the blog and learn how to do it yourself!

Get Yourself Prepared For a Creative Ride

Undoubtedly, the software package is coming your way in the form of an app falling under ‘free downloads’ category, but it delivers outstanding creative experience. You can download the executable Gravit file by double-clicking it in the file manager (64-bit version only) or simply try using the web version.

Current Version and Open Source Software Support

The software is currently in the candidate release stage, but version 1.0 is expected to release soon. Since, the program is available for users for the first time, it is quite obvious that it might contain some bugs or glitches. Users will have to remember that the web-based version of the app will not support the ‘Save’ feature so it is better to export files to PNG or JPG format.

 

Color Scheme and Interface

•           The software isn’t too different from other popular designing tools as it features a dark gray color scheme and an easy-to-use user interface (UI).

•           The buttons, tabs, and icons are small and lined with darker shades to look better even on big screens.

•           The moment you will reach the master screen, you can observe the central drawing area, toolbar on the left, and the selected tool panel located at the bottom.

•           You will find layers and pages options while observing the right-hand side of the screen, and align/transform, export and styles dialogs are visible just below it.

•           A simple menu bar is available for performing group, cut, paste and duplicate functions on the selected objects.

 

Some Additional Features and Their Functionalities 

The toolbar on the left-hand side showcases majority of this tool’s features like selection tool, document options, transform tool, lasso tool, drawing tools, text tool, and magnify tool. You can also see some icons with a small arrow in the corner, meaning they have sub-menus that activate by holding a left-click on the icon.

The software supports layers, pages, and smart objects so you can create multiple pages and view all of them at the same time. You can place all the necessary objects, texts, and images at the master page to offer consistent formatting to all the adjoining pages. 

Select and Align Drawing Objects

You can easily select an object like a textbox, circle, or any drawn element by clicking on it. You can also use transform tools to adjust the position and size of the drawn element and can even group it with others. If you want to group several drawn objects, then select them by right-clicking anywhere in the drawing area and choose ‘Group’ option. The software’s bottom toolbar is its distinctive feature, and it changes depending on the selected tool to reduce clutter and hide unwanted options from the screen.

Play with Colors and Text 

You can type as much as you can as per the dimensions of the drawn object. The number of options visible under this section depends on the tool you’re using. You’ll see that some of the icons are paired up with small icons, so click on it to expand the sections and view the details. If you have to color the objects, then pick the ‘Color Picker’ and access its feature-rich popup windows to apply beautiful colors and tweak the settings.

 

Formats and Linux OS support

As of now, the open source software can only save your projects in its format (.gravit), or you can export them to PNG and JPG file formats. The developers are planning to add PDF and other vector graphics formats in future releases. The ‘Export’ option may result in crashing the application, and a number of devices running on Linux operating systems may also experience version conflict.

Conclusion

It brings us to the end of this guide and hope that the above-mentioned details will help you in using this amazing drawing tool with excellence. It is agreeable that the software can’t replace mature vector drawing tools like Inkscape or Xara, but it can compete with applications that are still in the development stage. The software supports HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript, and you can easily use it with a browser if you don’t want to occupy your hard drive. If you are in favor of Linux download and want a tool for creating simple web graphics and UI elements, then Gravit is an ideal solution from free downloads section.