Is there a good SIMPLE drawing program, like the old MacDraw, that makes it easy to draw rectangles and lines, set the sizes of them (line width, object length/width), withOUT a lot of ‘graphic designer capabilities’? I tried Omni Graffle and Affinity Designer, and gave up on both of them (with much NSFW interaction) when all I wanted to do was draw a box of a given size in decimal inches, set the line width in pixels, set the fill color, and then add some vertical and horizontal lines to that box. I hate to admit I used to use PowerPoint for this, since that had what I needed, was easy to use, and didn’t bring a whole lot of baggage. (But I don’t have a copy of PPT on my M family Macs.)
If you know how to use PowerPoint—and the rest of Office, for that matter—LibreOffice is a free, open source way for you to do what you want with little-to-no transition/learning curve.
In fact, I decided to stop paying Microsoft for Office because pretty much all of my Word, Excel, and Powerpoint skills and habits were instantly applicable to LibreOffice.
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While not similar to MacDraw, and I’m not sure what you want to do with the rectangles and lines (print on paper? use in ___ App? Copy and paste into something?), first thing that comes to mind is Pages, which you might have or be able to download, or I suppose any of what used to be called iWork. I think they can all do what you’re seeking.
Preview has some ‘markup’ capabilities, I think you can draw in Notes and there is something called Freeform on my Mac that I think is a standard MacOS App.
Nothing wrong with using PPT for this imho.
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Besides LibreOffice, my interesting software tracking file lists for “like MacDraw” Growly Draw. I’ve never used it.
Freeform should do that for you
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Is there a good SIMPLE drawing program, like the old MacDraw, that makes it easy to draw rectangles and lines, set the sizes of them (line width, object length/width), withOUT a lot of ‘graphic designer capabilities’?
I guess you can do that in KeyNote just as easy as in PowerPoint, but I would use Growly Draw. This “drawing app for day-to-day use by people who don’t have a degree in graphic design” seems to be exactly what you want.
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Just want to add that while I don’t use Growly Draw, I do use a couple of other applications from Growly. So for anybody checking out Growly, don’t let the old school website or lack of social media hype deter you from trying out their software.
I need to be able to set specific size for the rectangles and lines. I did try Keynote, I could draw and set the size of a box. But then when I went to print the blanked thing out, the image was reduced. My box carefully sized to 0.95 (the leading zero is required) on paper measured as 0.85, so Not Helpful.
Is there a way to set the size of a rectangle in Freeform? I didn’t see a way to do that.
I’ll take a look at Growly Draw.
You know what I REALLY miss? Canvas! That program did everything, and it did it all very intuitively. The reboots never worked, they were massively buggy. (I sent money a couple of times for what was barely beta-level software.)
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I was going to suggest Canvas, but I haven’t used it in awhile. Sorry to hear that you experienced bugs.
You might take a look at some 2d CAD programs. I notice that CADintosh by LemkeSoft (the makers of GraphicConverter) is available to try as shareware.
I’ve checked out Growly Draw, and it is accurate for setting object sizes and then printing, except you would need to add a small constant to each dimension because Growly Draw considers the object to be slightly larger than the visible portion.
I have an app called Graphic, available on the app store. It’s accurate for printed object sizes. But it’s $40 CAD, so perhaps $28 USD. It’s fine.
For basic drawing I too prefer PowerPoint, I find it the easiest to use by far, as it reminds me of the old Mac drawing apps like MacDraw and Canvas 3.
This is what makes it appealing to me! I will probably try at least one of the apps, maybe more.
I tried Growly Draw, and this would work. You have to choose a single set of dimensions (points, inches, millimeters, etc), rather than a default that you can override. The one thing I miss is a “Distribute” feature, it does have “Align.”
Another vote for Freeform, very intuitive. May not suit exactly what you want but it was a great discovery for me after trying apps like Omnigraffle. Very short learning curve.
Agree. I use Omnigraffle for my complicated figures/drawings. I discovered I can do the simpler ones in Freeform requirement for measurements.
How about EazyDraw? It’s got a fairly long history on the Mac.
I’ve used EasyDraw. It’s a nice utility, but it’s gotten pricey over the years.
When I first downloaded it, they had a really creative approach. They had several versions available as different App Store apps. The newest version with all the latest features cost $100. The prior version cost less ($50, I think), and a few versions prior to that. Since I didn’t need much, I bought a 5-release-old version for $5.
But at some point, they changed that model. I assume they either weren’t making enough money or they ran afoul of some Apple policy. Today, it’s a free download, but it limits you to creating 20 drawings (unlimited printing and editing of pre-existing drawings). You can make a $20 in-app purchase to unlock it for 9 months or $95 to unlock it permanently.
Unfortunately, they didn’t grandfather anything when they switched pricing models. At some point, the next “upgrade” to the $5 version replaced it with the latest subscription-based version, forcing me to either pay up or stop using it. I stopped.
These days, I use either PowerPoint or LibreOffice Draw for my vector drawing needs.
Then use Pages.
Pages started out as a page-layout application (thus the name). If your printout doesn’t exactly match the specified size, then check your printer settings.
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Yes, my first thought was Pages and perhaps Keynote.
You can specify page dimensions in Keynote (and PP to be fair), you don’t have to work with the preset of HD dimensions.
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