3. Chart Drawing Tools and Their Functions | DTD

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How to Access Chart Drawing Tools and Minimize Toolbar
Chart Drawing Tools and Their Functions
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To annotate, draw, and navigate your charts, you'll want to first locate your left-hand toolbar. If you do not see the toolbar on the left of your charts, you might have minimized it. Please click the small blue button on the bottom left of your chart as shown in this image:

Expanded, your toolbar should look like something like the image below.

If you wish to minimize the toolbar in the future, find the small arrow button on the bottom left of your charts to minimize your toolbar for more chart space. This works well if you utilize the favorite function explained below.

Keep in mind that the icons may appear differently depending on the last tool you have personally used. Hovering over the icon will display the title of the function. This article goes over each one from top to bottom.

Chart Drawing Tools and Their Functions

View the video below for an overview of drawing tools, or use the chart below for more details on the functions of each.

Function Name	Image / Symbol	Function
Cursors		Changes the style or functions of the cursor Eraser will delete or remove any drawing or indicator on your chart
Trend Line Tools		Adds line-style drawings to charts
Gann and Fibonacci tools		Adds Fibonacci and channel-style drawings to charts
Geometric shapes		Adds additional drawings / shapes to your charts
Annotation tools		Annotates charts with different text and markers
Patterns		Draws on charts with different chart patterns
Prediction and Measurement Tools		Measures the X-axis and/or Y-axis, and allows traders to draw fake price action for predictions Click here to learn more about Long/Short Position Risk/Reward, which is one of the more helpful tools if you take the time to adjust it!
Icons		options for icons to add or draw on your chart the top row is a tab for grouped icons
Measure		temporarily measure an area that you draw on the charts Click here or scroll to learn more about measuring below.
Zoom		Clicking this icon and then highlighting an area will zoom in. Once used, a new icon will present itself to zoom out. Click that to zoom back out.
Magnet function		Strong Magnet: allows you to draw connections to either the high, low, open, or close of a candle stick Weak Magnet: allows you more flexibility; if near a candle, it will stick to either the high, low, open, or close, or it also will allow you to freely draw a line if it is far enough away from a candle.
Stay in drawing mode		This makes it so that after you make a drawing, it stays in that last used function instead of reverting back to the cursor. This is useful if you will be making multiple drawings all at once.
Lock All Drawing Tools		This makes all drawings unable to be moved or edited further. Traders could find this useful if they often move their drawings by accident.
Hide drawings / indicators		This function can be used to hide drawings or indicators temporarily and can be useful if you want to clean up your charts quickly to view only the price action. Click the button again to un-hide them.
Remove drawing/indicators		gives you a choice to delete all drawings, all indicators, or both quickly For more specific deletions, see the object tree below.
Show Favorite Drawing Tools Toolbar		allows you to turn on and off the display of the favorites toolbar Click here to learn more about the favorites function.
Object Tree		This displays all of your drawings and indicators in one place. You have the option from here to: Lock drawings so you cannot move them Hide - temporarily hide the drawing or indicator Remove - deletes the drawing or indicator

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The Favorite Function

While you learn about the features, you may find a few favorites that you will want to use repeatedly.

After expanding each function, you'll see an an outline of a star on the right-hand side. Clicking the star will make the star yellow and add it to your Favorites toolbar which appears directly on your chart in a horizontal toolbar.

The demonstration below shows how this can make your favorite tools easily accessible.

Measuring

To temporarily measure your chart, you can also use a keyboard shortcut: Shift +left click and drag your chart. If you click one more time after drawing, it will disappear. Therefore, if you want a more long-term measure, use the measurement tool section instead of the shortcut.

Long/Short Position Risk/Reward

See the example below of some settings you can use to adjust account size and your risk parameters so that you can do quick calculations for share size and risk/reward.

Patterns

To use these functions, you will have to repeatedly left-click the next part of the pattern until it is completed.
See the example here for a head and shoulders pattern drawing:

Editing Drawing Settings

Each drawing has slightly different settings and options. The images in this example apply to the horizontal line. To access settings on any drawing:

With a cursor selected, double-click on a drawing for a pop-up of the settings
Change settings as desired and click Ok to save. If, after changing the settings, you find it not to your liking and want to revert it, please click on the bottom left template section and select Apply Defaults.

You can also pull up a quick-edit setting panel with limited functions. To do so:

Click once on the drawing:
A small dot or dots will appear on the drawing that you highlighted to give you a visual aid to the one you are editing.

Drawing Visibility

By default, all drawings are set to be displayed on all time frames

If you do not want a drawing displayed on specific time frames or change the default setting, you will have to do so from your visibility Settings in the drawing. Once you click Ok, this will save for the next time you use that drawing.

Transferring and Copying Drawings

Transfer Drawings to Existing Chart Layouts

Transferring drawings across charts is a very common action. Drawings from one chart will not automatically appear on other chart widgets, even if drawings use the same ticker and color link.

The quickest and easiest way to transfer one drawing is using the standard Copy and Paste functions of your OS. For Windows:

Click on a drawing or drawings on your chart. To select multiple drawings, hold down the Ctrl key and then click on all the drawings you want to transfer.
Press Ctrl + C (or right-click and select Copy).
Click on the chart widget you want to transfer the drawing(s) to, and press Ctrl + V (or right-click and select Paste).
If you are using multiple charting layouts, we suggest saving your chart layout using the blue Save button that appears after you make the change.

In the visual example below, we used the right-click Copy and Paste functions; using the hotkeys described above works as well.

In the example below, we use the same concepts as above, except we found the drawings as a list using our Object Tree tab on the bottom left of the chart.

Using the Object Tree to copy is most useful if you are trying to transfer drawings outside of your view, such as a drawing on a weekly timeframe.

You can also apply a set of drawings from one chart widget to another if you save it as a chart layout. This is ideal when creating a new multi-chart window layout, as it will apply all the drawings and indicators at once.

Follow the steps listed below, or use the video as a guide, to apply drawings to a chart from a layout:

After making drawings on your chart, save the chart layout.
Open a new chart widget.
Load your saved layout with drawings on this new chart widget.
Adjust your timeframes and rename your chart layouts with a unique name, such as the timeframe and ticker.
If you want to save your chatroom window to remember these charts, make sure to save the chatroom layout.
If using multiple windows, click Save all windows as Default.

REMINDER: After all your hard work, remember to save your chart and chatroom layouts.
with our guide here.

Next Steps

Please remember to refer to our other articles in the charting section of our support portal here to learn more about other features of our charts.