Lucidspark's drag and drop interface and simple styling tools make it easy for you to collaborate and brainstorm. From adding ideas to your canvas to shape-styling basics, this article will teach you how to work with shapes in the Lucidspark editor so that you can strategize and design according to your needs.

This article discusses shapes and sticky notes. For more information on other Lucidspark tools, see the Add and style lines in Lucidspark, Add and style text in Lucidspark, and Freehand drawing in Lucidspark articles.

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Add a shape

There are several ways you can add a shape to the canvas: drag and drop, double-clicking the canvas, and using keyboard shortcuts.

Drag a shape from the Primary Toolbar and drop it onto the canvas using the Shapes icon.

As you drag a shape onto the board or move it around, notice that you will see dashed indications of it's location in relation to existing shapes on your board to assist with your placement.
Double click to add a sticky note.
Hold Command-Shift (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift (PC), then click and drag an existing shape on the canvas to duplicate it.
Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly create a new sticky note in the following directions
- Down: Enter
- Right: Tab
- Up: Shift + Enter
- Left: Shift + Tab

Learn more: You can also have your freehand drawings converted to perfect shapes. To learn more, check out our Freehand drawing in Lucidspark article.

Move, resize, and rotate a shape

To move a shape, drag it with your cursor or select it and move it using your arrow keys. Hold down "Shift" while using your arrow keys to move your shape in smaller increments.

To resize a shape, select it and drag one of the blue circles at the corners of the border. Hold down "shift" to maintain the shape's dimensions while resizing.

To rotate a shape, select it and drag it clockwise or counter-clockwise using the handle in the top left corner of its border.

how_to_rotate_a_shape_by_clicking_and_dragging_the_curved_arrow_in_the_upper-left_corner.gif

Shape styling basics

You can add styles to shapes and sticky notes in the following ways:

Style a shape with the Context Toolbar by choosing a fill color and border color after adding a shape to the canvas. You can also customize the border style and thickness from the Context Toolbar.

You can also style a sticky note from the Primary Toolbar by selecting the sticky note icon, and dragging a sticky note onto the board.

To choose a custom color, select theplus icon and use the slider and cursor to customize a color. When you’re finished, click Done.
- You can also use Hex, HSB, or RGB from the dropdown.
- To adjust the transparency of a custom color, move the transparency slider or change the 100% color saturation from the dropdown menu.

All shapes and sticky notes added after applying a style change will be added with that same new color.

Change shape

You can interchange shapes, sticky notes, and text boxes by clicking on the Change Shape button of the Context Toolbar.

To change an existing shape to a different shape, select the Change Object menu in the top-left corner of the Context Toolbar.

Delete a shape

To delete a shape, click to select it, then press Backspace or Delete on your keyboard. Alternatively, after selecting a shape, you can click the trashcan icon on the Context Toolbar.

Use special shapes

Some shapes have additional edit options so you can customize them to meet your needs. Small purple squares at vertices of these shapes indicate that you can click and drag with your mouse to alter the shape.

Star: Alter the thickness and number of points on the star.

Speech Bubble: Alter the roundedness of the shape and the length, direction, position, and width of the point.

Arrow: Alter the single and double arrow’s width, length, and direction.

Predefined Process: Alter the section width of the predefined process symbol

Add GIFs, images, emojis, and icons

Lucid’s search and import tools make it easy for you to find the shapes and images you need. We integrate with third party-websites, services, or resources to give you access to third-party content, including GIFs (powered by Giphy), Images (Bing Image Search, powered by Microsoft), and Icons (powered by Iconfinder) (collectively, “Non-Lucid Applications”). Please review the terms of service and privacy policy of any third party site or service applicable to your use of Non-Lucid Applications.

Image search and Iconfinder are not available in the FedRAMP environment. To learn more, see our FedRAMP overview article.

Select the image icon from the Primary Toolbar on the left-hand side of the canvas.
Select GIFs, Images, Emojis, Icons, or Streamline and type a keyword in the search bar to search the web.
When you find the GIF, image, emoji, or icon you want to add, drag and drop it onto the canvas.

Learn more: To enable and use Streamline icon sets, check out our Integrate Lucid with Streamline article.

Upload images and GIFs from your computer

You can insert PDF, PNG, JPEG and GIF image files into Lucidspark by selecting the three line menu at the top of the canvas. Click Insert then select the file type you want to insert. You can also drag and drop an image or GIF directly onto your canvas.

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Once you've successfully added the image to your canvas, you can treat it like a shape and resize it, add tags and emoji reactions, link to an external website, comment, or lock it. Additionally, you can replace the image with another, crop it, or change the image fit.

You can also double-click on an image or gif to crop it. For a demonstration of the cropping functionality available, check out our Double-click to crop images in Lucidspark community post.

Learn more: If you experience issues uploading an image, check out our Troubleshooting: Images article for troubleshooting steps.

Create table from a Google Sheet and Excel

You can create a table from a Google Sheet, Excel file, etc. by copying and pasting the cells of the sheet into the Lucidspark canvas. Copy the desired cells by selecting them and clicking Ctrl+C (if on a PC) or Command+C (if on a mac).

Then, go open your Lucidspark board and click Ctrl+V (if on a PC) or Command+V (if on a mac) to paste the cells and have a chart automatically created.

Once you've successfully added the chart to your canvas, you can treat it like a shape and resize it, add tags and emoji reactions, link to an external website, comment, or lock it.

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