This release packs a ton of improvements to significantly speed up your workflows in
Draw mode! We've completely re-designed how selection works in
GearConnect, giving you powerful new ways to select, organize, and edit multiple items at once.
With over two dozen improvements, this is the most features we have shipped in a single release yet! Now you'll be able to work faster than ever - whether you're aligning gear across your drawing, bulk-editing labels, or creating multiple connections in a single action. This update is all about improving your drawing workflows.
We've also made performance improvements under the hood, so large drawings feel smoother when you're zoomed in and working.
There is a lot to dive into, so check out
this video covering all these changes or read on below!
Highlights:
- Select any item - gear, text boxes, gear groups, and connections
- Multi-selection with strict/crossing modes and type filtering
- All new Selection Toolbar for quick access to common tools
- Alignment and distribution tools
- Bulk actions for labels, colours, opacity, lock/unlock, and more
- Create multiple connections at once between gear (Pro feature)
- Ports automatically highlight their compatible connections while drawing
- Auto-numbering for bulk label editing (Pro feature)
- New Node Edit Mode for customizing connection paths
- Export and print just a selection of your drawing (Pro feature)
- Improved performance with virtual rendering for large drawings
Please note that multi selection, bulk actions, and some other features require Local Mode - you will be prompted to switch over to Local Mode the first time you use one of these features, if you are not already.
Selection Re-Designed from the Ground Up
Any item on your drawing can now be selected - gear, text boxes, gear groups, and connections. Selected items now have a more prominent blue border making them easy to spot, and the border turns red when the item is locked so you can quickly tell the difference, no longer wondering why you can't move something.
Once an item is selected, you'll see the Selection Toolbar with common actions like editing labels, colours, and duplicating. Keyboard shortcuts have been updated to work with all selectable items too, so you can quickly duplicate or delete anything on your drawing!
Multi-Selection with Selection Modes
Click and drag to select multiple items at once. The selection behavior changes based on your drag direction:
- Left-to-right drag selects only items fully enclosed by the selection box (strict selection) - shown with a solid blue box
- Right-to-left drag selects any items that touch the selection box (crossing selection) - shown with a dashed orange box
When you have multiple items selected, the Selection Toolbar adapts to show actions relevant to your selection, and a summary bar appears at the bottom of the drawing showing counts by item type. You can filter your selection to specific types using either the dropdown in the toolbar or by clicking on a type in the summary bar. This allows you to perform bulk actions on only a subset of your total selection.
Alignment and Distribution
Arrange items in your drawings with precision using the new alignment and distribution tools. Select multiple items and use the Align Items button in either the Draw Toolbar or Selection Toolbar to access:
Alignment Options
Align left, center, or right (horizontal)
Align top, middle, or bottom (vertical)
Distribution Options
Distribute Horizontally - arrange items in a single row
Distribute Vertically - arrange items in a single column
Auto Grid - automatically arrange items in a roughly square grid (e.g. 9 items become 3×3)
Custom Grid - specify exact column counts for precise control
All distribution options use a configurable spacing value to help you align consistent gaps between items.
Bulk Actions
Work faster with bulk operations on your selections. When you have multiple items selected, you can:
- Edit Labels - Change labels on all selected items at once
- Duplicate - Copy all selected items in one action - including connections!
- Reset Auto Size - Restore default sizing for gear groups
- Remove All Nodes - Clear all nodes from selected connections to reset their paths
- Change Layers - Change layers not only for the selected gear, but also selected connections
- Edit Colours - Apply primary and secondary colours across your selection
- Edit Opacity - Adjust transparency using a percentage slider to several text boxes
- Lock/Unlock - Toggle lock state for all selected items
- Remove - Delete multiple items with a single confirmation
Bulk Connection Creation
You can now create multiple connections between gear in one go! Access the bulk connection dialog from several places including the Selection Toolbar, right-click menu, or by holding Ctrl while releasing a new connection.
The dialog shows the total number of compatible port pairs between your source and target gear, and you can choose to create all of them or just a few. If you want connections to follow the same flow as your original - for example, all going from right-side ports to left-side ports - enable Same side only to limit bulk creation to matching sides.
Because GearConnect automatically validates connections for you, it uses this same validation to only suggest ports that are the same as your first connection - ensuring you don't accidentally wire up incorrect gear!
Port Highlighting
When creating connections, compatible ports are now highlighted to show you exactly where you can connect. Incompatible ports are dimmed, making it easier to see your options at a glance instead of waiting to make the connection just to be notified it's incompatible.
Auto-Numbering
When bulk editing labels, you can now automatically add sequential numbers to each item. Enable the auto-number checkbox, set a starting number, and choose an order direction (left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top, or selection order) to control which item gets which number. Enter a label like "Speaker" and your items become "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2", etc. - or leave it blank for just numbers.
Connection Node Edit Mode
You now have more control over when you are editing your connection paths. Editing connection nodes is a new dedicated cursor mode to prevent accidental changes while navigating your drawing. Toggle Node Edit Mode from the Draw Toolbar to edit nodes on any connection, or select a single connection and use Edit Nodes from the Selection Toolbar to edit just that connection's path.
We've also removed the drag bars on connections to avoid routing issues - you can simply just use nodes now to position your connections instead, making it much simpler! The floating delete button on connections has also been removed to prevent accidental deletions - use the right-click menu or Selection Toolbar instead.
Selection Export
Need to share just a part of your drawing? When you have items selected and export or print, you'll now be asked whether to export just the selection or the entire drawing. This is great for sharing specific sections of complex drawings with colleagues without having to export everything.
Virtual Rendering
Large drawings now load and perform significantly better thanks to virtual rendering. Only the items visible at any given time are rendered, dramatically improving scrolling and zooming performance on complex projects when zoomed in.
Additional Updates
But that's not all! We have several other improvements and fixes below:
Improvements
- Improved smart connection routing performance - the feature now tries harder to find valid paths before falling back to straight lines
- You can now change a selected connection's layer from the Draw Toolbar
- When you have multiple items selected on different layers the drop-down will now say "Mixed"
- Duplicating items now only adjusts the zoom if the new item would be off-screen
- Opacity dialog now uses a slider with percentage display instead of decimal input
- Shift+Backspace now triggers "Delete Unused Gear" for faster cleanup
- Undo now works on the first press - no more "waiting" messages or needing to press it multiple times if the drawing is busy saving or updating
- Version History now saves when enabling or disabling Local Mode to prevent losing recent changes
- Added confirmation dialogs for more delete operations to prevent accidental deletions
- Updated tooltip styling for better visibility in both dark and light modes
- Added a warning with a link to the docs when Safari usage is detected
Bug Fixes
- Fixed being able to interact with the Library Editor preview
- Fixed zoom to fit cutting off drawings that are far from the origin
- Fixed PNG and JPG exporting crashing on Chrome with large drawings
- Fixed the app flickering during export
- Fixed gear borders not updating immediately when moved to a layer with a different colour
- Fixed text boxes being editable when the project is locked
- Fixed the drawing getting stuck in a locked state when you middle mouse panned over a text box
- Fixed locking gear groups and text boxes not triggering a project save
- Fixed undoing gear group colour changes not applying correctly
- Fixed gear group and text box undo actions being mislabeled as "gear"
- Fixed undoing not resetting gear inside gear groups correctly - they now recalculate correctly after undo/redo
- Fixed several layout issues on smaller screens - toolbars now have proper scroll bars without items overlapping each other
- Fixed actions in My Gear pane being cut off on smaller screens
