Measure with the Ruler tool

1. Link two things

Pick Ruler from the tool rail and its mode toolbar appears up top. Choose Link, then click two plants or objects. A link stretches between them showing the live distance, and it stays put, re-measuring if either one moves.

Links are saved with the garden and outlive the tool. Click a linked plant from any Edit tab and its links appear; click one of those lines to select it and the Link rail opens with the two ends and the width, depth and direct distance between them. ⌫ removes the selected link from wherever you are, though creating one still needs the Ruler tool.

2. Tape a quick distance

Switch to Tape and measure in two clicks: one to plant an end, one to finish. Between the clicks you can type a length and press ↵ Enter to lock it, leaving the cursor to pick only the angle. It is the same type-to-lock idiom as Draw and Fence, down to accepting a comma as the decimal point and capping a length at 100.99 m. ⌫ and esc walk back a rung at a time: the digits you typed, then the lock, then the first end. One more esc with nothing pending leaves Tape for Select. The old press-and-drag still commits on release if that is your habit.

A finished tape stays adjustable: drag one of its ends to resize it, or the line itself to slide the whole thing. It is never saved with the garden, but it does stay on screen as you move between edit tools, so you can measure a gap, switch to the Plants panel and plant into it. It is hidden in View mode. Select one and press ⌫ to remove it, or sweep the lot with Clear tapes on the ruler’s mode toolbar, which only appears when there is something to clear.

3. Lock it, then edit it afterwards

Between the two clicks, type a number and press ↵ Enter to lock the tape to an exact length. The second click then picks only the direction, so the tape lands on that figure however far away your pointer is. That is what makes it a straight-edge to build against rather than a reading.

Once it is down, drag the line itself and the whole tape slides, keeping both its length and its angle. Drag one of its ends instead and you resize it: the end follows your pointer and the reading follows the end. Either way a tape is no longer a scratch gesture, it stays on the canvas when you switch tools, so you can lay one, go and draw against it, and come back to it.

4. Drop a ruler and set its step

Choose Ruler and drag out a graduated, rotatable guide. Its Step sets how far apart the marks sit, tune it in the tray to match the spacing you're laying out.

5. Snap to a step

With a ruler down, placement can snap to its marks, so plants and objects land at exact intervals, a clean 0.5 m apart, without eyeballing it. The channel runs both ways: an area corner you are drawing or dragging snaps to those marks too, and to the endpoints of any tape, so you can lay a tape, lock it to 4.5 m, and land the next corner exactly on its end. Going the other way, a tape end grabs an area’s corner or edge, the same magnet the Fence tool uses for its posts, so a tape end and a post dropped on the same spot agree.

Only a tape’s endpoints attract, never its midpoint or its line, and a tape end wins over a ruler mark it overlaps. Both beat grid snap and the ⇧ Shift axis-lock, which are ways of being approximately right where this is a way of being exactly right. A length you typed and locked while drawing still beats all of it.

What wins when two things are close Only a tape’s endpoints attract, never its midpoint or its line, and a tape end beats an overlapping ruler mark. The pull runs both ways: an area corner snaps to a tape end, and a tape end grabs an area corner or edge.