GoDraw3 is a FileMaker drawing tool. Since it is FileMaker (100% native) and since you are a FileMaker developer, you can take this tool and do anything you want with it.

Use it as it is

When you first open the trial version, you’re given a complete set of familiar drawing tools with which to draw on an image or create an image from scratch. A user can:

  • Place text on an image
  • Draw with a brush or a line
  • Change the color/size/stroke/opacity of an object
  • Add an image
  • Tag data to an object
  • Copy/paste an object
  • Delete / undo / redo actions
  • Group objects
  • Change the size of the drawing canvas
  • Select/rotate/scale objects
  • Zoom in and out

And much more. There are so many possibilities for the user to use this for FileMaker drawing.

That’s great.

What FileMaker developers do

But FileMaker developers (you and me) are interested in much more than drawing. We’re interested in hacking at any tool to make it work perfectly for our users and for the custom app. Well guess what, you Ms. FileMaker developer, can do that to GoDraw3. You can hack away at this tool until it barely resembles the example editor. Please. We want you to hack at it. We want you to make it your own, and we’ve set it up for that very purpose.

How is hacking this possible? Because GoDraw3 is pure FileMaker. There’s nothing else you need to worry about. Since you know FileMaker, you can do whatever you want with this. Here’s a list of possibilities (woefully incomplete):

  • Add tool tips to the buttons
  • Remove tools that your users don’t want
  • Rearrange the tools
  • Change the background color
  • Add a button that only draws a purple circle with 50% transparency and with a yellow stroke
  • Change the default text to be 100 pt using Arial
  • Tag data to an object, and save that data to FileMaker
  • Include Snippets (JSON objects) & Favorites (.png or .jpg files) for reuse
  • Add a button that places a red arrow onto the canvas.
  • Make different tools available for different users
  • Adjust the size of the canvas
  • Remove the color palette
  • Disable the scaling or rotating of an object
  • Create a visual data-entry only system

And much more.

My hack

Here’s my hack.

My Method

This really looks a lot different than the example file. Here’s what I did:

  • Removed most of the tools
  • Included only buttons that draw specific colored circles.
  • Cleared the document size (I overrode the default document size) so this could go on forever, and as the picture grows, so too does the size.
  • Added the “Circle” script to each button and adjusted the “Circle” script to collect the fill color from the parameter on each button. No longer does it set an empty $toolOptions variable (as the example does) but instead the script gets the script parameter as the options. The Red circle has this in the parameter:

Hack away

GoDraw3 is a FileMaker’s dream tool. It is perfectly fine as it is for drawing, but FileMaker hackers will take great pleasure in hacking the heck out of it.

Go ahead. Download it. Hack it. Do what you want with GoDraw3.