Arrow

The Arrow tool draws arrows that connect shapes to each other. The ends snap to shapes automatically; when you move a shape, the arrow follows it.

Shortcut

Key	Action
A	Choose the Arrow tool

How to draw

1. Choose the Arrow (A) tool from the toolbar.
2. Drag from one shape to another; the start and end points attach to those shapes.
3. When you move or resize an attached shape, the arrow end stays on the shape and updates its direction.
4. Multi-point arrow: click to add intermediate points; to finish, double-click or press Enter or Esc.

Selection bar

When you draw an arrow and select it, a selection bar appears above it. For arrows, these controls are available:

• Stroke color: choose the arrow color.
• Stroke width: thin, medium, or thick.
• Stroke style: solid, dashed, dotted.
• Drawing style: Clean, Sketch, or Scribble; styles other than Clean also show a bowing control.
• Arrow shape: straight, curved, elbow, and smart routing (see below).
• Arrowheads: choose the start and end heads separately: classic arrow, triangle, hollow head, ER (crow’s-foot), and UML markers.
• Detach: if the arrow is attached to a shape, a button to remove the attachment appears in the bar.
• Multi-point shape: on a multi-point arrow, an arrow-shape picker is also present.
• Opacity, layer order, and Duplicate / Delete.

Note: Arrows have no fill or corner controls.

Smart connector

The smart connector makes the arrow that connects two shapes follow an orthogonal path that routes around other shapes.

1. Select an arrow.
2. From the arrow shape dropdown in the selection bar, choose Smart.

The arrow now treats intervening shapes as obstacles and draws an orthogonal route around them. As you drag the shapes, the route is recalculated live.

• Routes are orthogonal (90° turns); this is the shape that most naturally matches obstacle avoidance.
• It works best with arrows whose ends are attached to shapes; the ends snap to the shape edge. If unattached, it still routes around based on the nearest shapes.
• If no suitable path is found, it falls back to a clean L-bend.

Tips

• If you want the ends to attach to empty space rather than a shape, drop them outside the shape.
• For ER markers such as cardinality (one-to-many, zero-or-one), set the arrowheads to crow’s-foot shapes.