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A square from two adjacent corners.

Menu: Draw > Square | Node: Square | In depth: Rectangles & squares

Click two adjacent corners. That one edge is the whole square: its length is the side length and its direction is the square's orientation, so the remaining two corners have nowhere else to be.

Those two corners are made for you, and they follow. Each is held a square's-width off the edge you drew, at a right angle to it, so the figure stays a square no matter what you do to it afterward. Drag either corner you clicked and the square turns and resizes around the other one, still square. There is no way to pull it out of shape, because the shape is not stored, it is derived.

The order of the two clicks decides which side it lands on. The square is built off one particular side of the edge you drew, so if it appears on the wrong side of your construction, click the same two corners the other way round. Nothing else changes.

What you get is a group holding four segments, one per side, and the two corner points you clicked. It is an outline, not a filled shape: fill is opt-in, so select the four edges and make a Region when you want an area rather than a boundary. That is the same for every rectangle and polygon the Draw menu makes, and it is deliberate, since most squares in a pattern are scaffolding for what comes next rather than the thing itself.

Both clicks place points the way the Point tool does, so a square can be hung off existing geometry: start it on a crossing and that corner stays on the crossing.

There is a second way to a square, worth knowing because it behaves differently: hold Shift while drawing Rectangle: XY-Aligned and the rectangle locks square. That one stays aligned to the axes and its far corner does not hunt for a crossing, where this tool will take any orientation you like and snaps like everything else. Constraining with Shift has the difference in full.

< Previous: Rectangle: Directed | Next: Regular Polygon: Edge >

• In the node graph: Square - build the same square as a node.
• Rectangles & squares: the three ways to a four-sided figure.
• Region: Curves: turning the outline into an area.