Trace

Trace makes the line or shape you are drawing follow a line or an outline that is already on the map: a parcel edge, a buffer, a building, a drawn line or the edge of a GIS layer you uploaded. Instead of clicking every corner, you click once on the edge and move along it, and the drawing follows it corner by corner.

Video: Trace

Use it, for example, to draw a fence along the property line, a shape that shares an edge with the parcel, or a setback area that follows a buffer.

Turn Trace on or off

Trace is a tile in Edit tools on the map's tools panel. Click it to turn it on: it is blue while it is on, and a message says Trace is on. Click it again to turn it off.

You can turn it on before you start drawing or in the middle of a drawing. It stays on for the next drawings until you turn it off.

Trace a line or an edge

1. Turn on Trace.
2. Turn on a drawing tool that draws a line or a shape, for example a fence or a parcel.
3. Click the first points of your drawing as usual.
4. Click on, or close to, the line or edge you want to follow. A click within a few pixels of it is enough: the point is put on the edge.
5. Move the pointer along the edge. The drawing follows the edge and adds its corners as you go.
6. Click again where you want to leave the edge. Then go on drawing as usual, and finish the drawing the usual way.

A click away from every line ends the trace too.

What can be traced

Trace follows the lines and outlines of the visible layers drawn as features on the map:

• the features of your design layers (pipes, beds, trenches, buildings, site features and your own drawings)
• the parcel and its buffers
• GIS data you uploaded or loaded as features (see Import and export drawings and GIS files)

It can't follow basemaps, aerial photos or layers shown as images or tiles. Hide a layer to keep Trace from following it, and turn a layer on to be able to trace it.

Points and symbols have no edge to follow: Trace works only with lines and shapes.

Trace, snapping and whole feet

• While Trace is on, the line you draw doesn't round to whole feet (see Snapping): the points follow the traced edge exactly.
• A trench line's Follow contour doesn't bend the line while Trace is on. Turn Trace off to draw along the contour.
• Snapping still works for the points you click away from a trace.

Related

• Map tools
• Snapping and Snap guides
• Draw or replace a parcel