Snapping is Inkscape’s ultimate alignment feature. If your drawing style calls for precision, or a particular project requires precision, this feature will become your good friend. It is a very powerful and complex tool, but in this beginner tutorial, we will keep it simple. Additional tutorials will cover more advanced snapping techniques.

For a good overview of snapping, you might want to consult Lesson 15.1 of Inkscape for Artists — Step by Step, along with it’s video.

Tips for Beginners

Using these tips will increase beginners’ chance of success in learning how to use snapping. As you become more experienced, you may wish to change these. But they are very, very helpful for beginners.

Set Edit menu > Preferences > Behavior > Snapping, as follows:
- Snap indicator: Check “Enable snap indicator.”
  The snap indicator is a small bit of text that flashes over the canvas, telling the user which snap point snapped to which snap target. Without this information, it can be hard to see exactly what snapped. The amount of time does not especially matter – just so it’s long enough for you to read it. Set the persistence time as you like.
- What should snap: Check “Only snap the node closest to the pointer”.
  If this is not checked, Inkscape snaps to whatever snap target is closest. However in our experience, the closest object is rarely, just by chance, what we want to snap to. With this option, users can better control what snaps, by grabbing the object with the mouse, as close as possible to the node (or other snap point) they want to snap.
- What should snap: Set “Weight factor” to 0.6 or higher.
Along the right edge of the Inkscape window lies the Snap Controls bar. As of version 1.3, it contains 22 options. To maintain the most control, we suggest that beginners enable only the few options that they need for each step; and disable all the other options. Even for advanced users, it is sometimes necessary to change the snap options for every step.

Draw a Checkerboard

Snapping can make drawing a checkerboard quick and easy (not to mention, precise). Let’s try it! Open Inkscape and follow along. You can refer to the animation for details.

Using the Rectangle tool , hold down the Ctrl key, to draw a perfect square.
Click on a color chip in the palette, to give it a dark color.
Set up the Snap Control bar the way you see it in the animation:
- Enable the top button, to globally toggle snapping On.
- Click the next button down, to globally toggle Snap to Bounding Boxes.
- Click the third button down, Snap Bounding Box Edges.
- And the fourth button, Snap Bounding Box Corners
- Disable all the other options.
Switch to the Selection tool , and select your first square, if it’s not still selected. Click Edit menu > Duplicate, or this button on the Commands bar , or press Ctrl + D.
With the Duplicate command, the new square is created right on top of the first one, so just drag it off to the side.
Click a light color chip in the palette, to give it a light color.

Now, refer to the animation to see how snapping works. Note that even though it’s hard to see, it is the bounding boxes¹ that are snapping here, and not the squares.

Grab the light colored square with your mouse, near the top or bottom left corner ², and drag it towards the right side corners of the dark square.
At this point, the light square contains the snap point (the top or bottom left bounding box corner) and the dark square contains the snap target (the right bounding box edge and top or bottom right corner).
As you can see, when the light square gets close enough, it sort of jumps away from the mouse, and snaps precisely to the right side of the dark square.

Drag a selection box around both squares, and Duplicate, as you did in step 4.
Drag the 2 new squares away from originals.
Without deselecting, position the mouse near one of the left side corners of the dark square, and drag both new squares towards the right side of the original light square; until the corners snap.

Now you should have 4 squares, side by side. Drag a selection box around them all. Duplicate, and snap the new row of 4 to the first row of 4, creating a full row of 8.
Select and duplicate the first full row of 8. Drag the new row away from the first row.
While it’s still selected, click Object menu > Group, or the Group button on the Commands bar , or press Ctrl + G.
Click Object menu > Flip Horizontal, or this button on the Tool Controls bar , or press H on the keyboard.
Now snap the second row of squares below the first row. Remember to position your mouse near the snap point (one of the top corners) when you first grab the row of squares.
Continue with the same routine. Select and duplicate those 2 whole rows of squares, drag the 2 new rows downward, and snap below the first 2 rows.
Now with 4 rows, half the checkerboard is finished. Select and duplicate them all at once, drag the 4 new rows, and snap them below the first 4 rows.
Select all 8 rows and click Object menu > Group. Grouping will prevent the squares from accidentally being separated, if you need to move the checkerboard around.

Conclusion

If you have any questions or comments about this tutorial, please feel free to post a message in our forum. To learn a lot more about Inkscape, you might want to read Inkscape for Artists – Step by Step. Also, there are many more tutorials like this, that you can find in the menu at the top of this page.

Footnotes

The bounding box is a dashed line rectangle that can be seen around the object that is selected. It is best observed when a circular object is selected. See the illustration below left.

When the Selection tool is enabled, 8 arrows appear around the dashed line rectangle. See above right. ↩︎
The positioning of the mouse is very important, to take advantage of the snapping options that we set at the beginning of this tutorial. ↩︎