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ZeldDesigner

Z-plane Element Layout and Drawing

ZeldIcon.png

ZeldDesigner is a simple to use yet powerful 2D vector graphics drawing application for creating illustrations, schematics, diagrams, artwork, and more. Draw, edit, and combine shapes, with a variety of line strokes, fill colors, and fill gradients to create impressive, complex illustrations. Vector drawings are described mathematically, rather than using bitmaps, allowing them to be scaled to any resolution for display and printing. 

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ZeldDesigner provides primitive shapes, measurement tools, word art, and image manipulation. Shapes can be combined by joining, intersecting, and subtracting. Alignment and distribute tools provide automatic and precise layout. Draw new shapes using lines, curves, and freehand.

Demo Version

Want to explore ZeldDesigner features? Download the demo version to try for free. All features except Save and Print are enabled.

Screenshots

Features

  • Move, resize, rotate, shear, flip, transparency, group, and adjust Z-plane layer of elements on canvas

  • Align and distribute elements relative to each other (horizontal, vertical, centered, grid, radial, ramp)

  • Combine shapes by joining, subtracting, intersecting, and exclusive joining

  • Edit shape control points, add and delete verticies, insert line segments, quadratic curves, and cubic curves

  • Set stroke thickness, dash-pattern, line color, and line style

  • Set fill color, or paint with linear, radial, conical gradients, or pattern/image fill

  • Insert primitive geometric shapes, images, text, word art, symbols, lines, measurement arrows, links, and callouts

  • Image editor includes crop, perspective transform, background removal, color/hue adjust, contrast/brightness, other filters

  • Draw tools: line, orthogonal line, freeform, freeform with smoothing, quadratic and cubic curves

  • Paint tool: paint or erase with different shapes

  • Adjust canvas ruler scale to cm, inch, pixels or custom for scaled drawings (including support for English fractional units)

  • Multiple canvas pages

  • Export to PNG images

  • Import and Export SVG files

  • 3D shapes

Sample Files

  • Download a sample .zld file here (this is a native file, double click to open in ZeldDesigner)

  • Download example .svg files: yellow car, blue car, camera, tiger (Right click these links to download, then right click file in Finder and choose Open With ZeldDesigner, or open from within the application.

Tutorial Videos

Tutorials

Tutorials
Painting with Shapes
02:21
Play Video

Painting with Shapes

Working with Strokes
02:27
Play Video

Working with Strokes

Gradient Tutorial
03:52
Play Video

Gradient Tutorial

Version History

Version 1.0 for MacOS    

  • Release December 20, 2018

  • Known Issues:

  1. When printing a shape with a gradient that has transparency, the transparency is rendered opaque​. Note: underlying issue in library documented in bug report:  JDK-8212643​

  2. Conical Gradient Paint is not exportable to SVG files. This is a feature that is not supported by the SVG specification.

  3. Linear Gradient Paint with NO CYCLE selected does not extend start anchor color to the edge of shape when printing. To workaround this issue, start your linear gradient at the edge of a shape and place gradient points where desired. Note: underlying issue in library documented in bug report: JDK-8215940

 

Version 1.1 for MacOS 

  • Release January 21, 2019

  • New Features:

  1. Open, import, and edit SVG files​

  2. Eyedropper selection tool in color selection panel

  3. Re-edit existing gradients

  4. Custom line border thickness

  5. New block arrow shape

  6. Hide Rulers

  7. Icons for retina display

  8. Other minor cosmetic changes and bug fixes

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Version 1.2 for MacOS 

  • Release February 11, 2019

  • New Features:

  1. Make canvas elements non-printable

  2. Text shape

  3. Wave shape

  4. Paint Tool (paint/erase) new or existing shapes

  5. Shape Library

  6. Distribute random mode

  7. Other minor bug fixes

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Version 1.3 for Windows and MacOS 

  • Release March 11, 2019

  • New Features:

  1. Line strokes, including Empty, Double-Line, and Shape stroke

  2. Create shapes from strokes

  3. Paste stroke attributes

  4. Split shapes into pieces

  5. Improved editing (add points, close and unclose paths, vertex labels)

  6. Logistics Module - Barcode element and predefined logistics symbols

  7. Adjustable mouse wheel speed

  8. Other minor bug fixes

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Version 1.3.2 for Windows and MacOS 

  • Release May 1, 2019

  • New Features:

  1. Support for TIFF images

  2. New Page Setup dialog with 100+ page formats

  3. Fixing bug with flipping grouped items

  4. Other minor bug fixes related to resizing and zooming

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Version 1.3.4 for MacOS (App Store only) 

  • Release May 30, 2019

  • New Features:

  1. Architectural Module with floorplan shapes

  2. Crescent (moon) shape

  3. Edit texture-fill image in-place

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Version 1.4.0 for Windows and MacOS 

  • Release June 26, 2019

  • New Features:

  1. Shape clipping

  2. Significant updates to Links, Link Points, and Anchors

  3. Flowchart Module

  4. Bug fixes related to copying Links and Link Points, ZArrow units, and background on inserted pages

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Version 1.4.1 for MacOS (App Store only) 

  • Release October 14, 2019

  • New Features:

  1. Absolute X-Y positioning

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Version 1.5.1 for MacOS (App Store only) 

  • Release February 20, 2020

  • New Features:

  1. Mouse Drag Selected Objects: Dragging the mouse now moves all selected objects instead of the last selected one.

  2. Transparency on Exported Images: Option to preserve (or not) transparency when exporting selected/canvas to an image.

  3. Ruler Offset: Offset the horizontal and vertical ruler's starting position (in Custom Scale window).

  4. Move Elements: Right-click context menu has option to move all selected elements horizontally or vertically.

  5. Fractional Units: Leading zero not required when entering fractional units. Decimal entries are converted to fractions.

  6. Open Recent: File menu has a menu for opening one of the most recently opened files.

  7. Arrow Styles: New arrow-end styles.

  8. Tab Traversal: Element fields on the bottom of the window can be traversed by using TAB or SHIFT-TAB.

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Version 1.5.2 for Windows  

  • Release April 14, 2020

  • Updated with latest features and fixed Windows-only bugs

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Version 1.6.0 for Mac  

  • Release May 27, 2020

  • New module with over 50 electronic shapes including analog components, semiconductors, and logic gates.

  • New join mode "Append" that combines shapes and preserves their borders.

  • Link Points anchored to Shapes now follow rotation of the shape.

  • Fixed bug that was preventing scroll by arrow keys

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Version 1.7.0 for Mac  

  • Release June 11, 2020

  • Emoji vector shapes

  • Text editor for text elements uses selected font

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Version 2.0.0 for Mac  

  • Release January 27, 2021

  • 3D shapes

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Version 2.1.0 for Mac  

  • Release February 14, 2021

  • Image filter controls: lightness and color temperature

  • Element selector: popup menu to select any element by name on the canvas

License Information

Licensing and usage of ZeldDesigner is subject to the standard Apple End User License Agreement

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THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE LICENSES

Several open source software libraries are built into ZeldDesigner.  These are subject to the following copyright and license terms:

 

The Java Runtime Engine (JRE) is subject to Oracle's license terms.

The filters library from jhlabs and other example code are licensed by the Apache license.

The batik library from Apache (https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik/) which is licensed by the Apache license.

The OkAPIBarcode library from Robin Stuart is licensed by the Apache license.

An extension to the batik library as modified by Marco Hutter (MIT license, see comments on github page)

The ConicalGradientPaint code from the SteelSeries-Canvas Project from Gerrit Grunwald (license here)

The Emoji-Java library (MIT license)

The jogamp library with native libraries (BSD license) 

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