Tips and Tricks #27: Play around with shapes in Show

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to our next Tips and Tricks post for Show. You can find our previous posts of the Tips and Tricks series here .

Using custom shapes in your presentations—whether straight or curved, simple or complex—empowers you to create your own designs and illustrate your ideas perfectly. In today's post, we will see how effectively you can use points and segments to customize shapes in Show .

Our post on, "Convert Shapes Using Show," helps you to convert a shape to another pre-defined shape. But, what if you want to modify the existing shape to something different from what Show offers? Here's where Edit Points come handy.

With Show's Edit Points , you can easily modify any shape to any form using Vector points. These flexible points allow you to customize shapes the way you want. Simply include and drag these points in your existing shape to obtain your new design.

You can also convert these Vector points to arcs in Show. The arcs are accompanied by control points (green points). Using these control points, you can position the arcs however you like.

Using Edit Points in Show, you can:

Add and move Vector points to form new shapes
Convert Vector points to arcs
Use Keyboard keys to position arcs

Add and move Vector points to form new shapes

Add Vector points to the shape in your slide when you want to change it to a shape with more than four corners. Here's how you can do this:

Select the figure in the slide and click Edit Points . Vector points appear.
Select one of the points to copy it (it will turn into a blue dot).
Place the cursor on the area in the shape border where you want to paste the copied Vector point and click to paste.
Drag any of the points to obtain your desired shape.

Tip: To select multiple corners of a shape, use either Command key or draw a region covering those corners.

Convert Vector points to arcs

You can convert Vector points to arcs when you want to add curves to your shape. You just need to:

Select the figure in the slide and click Edit Points . The shape's Vector points will appear.
Press the Command key and drag the points inwards or outwards to form an arc accordingly.

Tip: Double-click a point to change it to an arc and vice-versa.

Use keyboard keys to position arcs

You can use keyboard commands to slightly adjust the orientation of arcs in your shape. Here are some different types of arcs you can use.

Tilt arcs

You can tilt arcs in your shape using its control points in Show. All you need to do is:

Select the figure in the slide and click Edit Points . The shape's Vector points will appear.
Select a Vector point in the curve. The point will turn blue along with the control points.
Select a control point, press the Command key, and rotate it to the required degree. As you rotate one control point, the other rotates correspondingly.

Asymmetrically align arcs

Move the control points in any direction to add uneven proportions to an arc in Show.

Select the figure in the slide and click Edit Points . The shape's Vector points will appear.
Select a Vector point in the curve. The point appears blue along with the control points.
Select a control point, press the Control key, and move the point. As you adjust one control point, the other changes asymmetrically.

Symmetrically align arcs

You can also make identically proportionate arcs using control points in Show.

Select the figure in the slide and click Edit Points . The shape's Vector points will appear.
Select a Vector point in the curve. The point appears blue along with the control points.
Select a control point, press the Shift key, and adjust the point either horizontally or vertically. As you alter one control point, the other moves symmetrically.

Note: You can even move just one control point of the arc in Show. Simply select the control point and press the Option key (for Mac) or Alt key (for Windows). The point becomes moveable. As you adjust this control point, the other remains static.

You can also remove the existing Vector points in Show. Simply select the point in the shape and click Delete .

We hope you found this post useful! We'll be back soon with more interesting tips for Show.

You can connect with us on Facebook and Twitter to learn more about how Show can help improve your business communications. You may also write to us at support@zohoshow.com or comment below.

Happy presenting!

—the Show team

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