Using the Scribble tool

Trace any shape with your finger or an Apple Pencil — either as a free annotation, as on-canvas handwriting, or as the on-canvas representation of a product that's drawn as a scribble.

Where this lives: Customers → Appointment → Drawing → Tools → Scribble
For: Admin
Manager
Customer Care
Sales

Why this matters

The Scribble tool does two jobs that look the same and behave differently. Used on a general layer, a scribble is a free annotation — a piece of communication on the canvas, no price attached. Used on a product layer whose product is configured to draw as a scribble, the scribble is the on-canvas representation of an instance of that product. Same gesture, two outcomes.

Scribble is the right tool when the real-world shape isn't well captured by a primitive. Polygon reads as a shape with corners; Rectangle, Triangle, and Circle force the shape to fit the tool. Scribble lets the shape come out the way you trace it — at the cost of a slightly messier drawing if your hand is unsteady. It's also the right tool for handwriting on the canvas. With an Apple Pencil or a steady finger, a few words written directly on the canvas carry across to the contract and job information sheet exactly as drawn, in your own handwriting — the in-app equivalent of scribbling on a printed plan with a pen, and faster than opening the Text tool's entry sheet for a one-line note.

The trace communicates the shape on the canvas; the measurements that drive pricing are entered separately on the layer, regardless of how cleanly you trace.

Step 1 — Decide where the scribble belongs: a product, an annotation, or a note

Open Drawing on the appointment, then pick a layer in the layer sidebar. The layer you choose determines what the scribble means:

A product layer whose product is set to draw as a scribble. The styling controls in the toolbar dim out, because the scribble will use the product's preset fill color, stroke color, stroke width, line style, and label. The scribble you draw represents an instance of that product on the canvas and is labeled with the product's name on the contract drawing. The shape and extent of the scribble on the canvas are illustrative — measurements that drive pricing live in the layer's measurement inputs, not the canvas geometry.
A general or custom layer. The styling controls stay live. Scribbles you draw here are annotations or handwritten notes — they don't add anything to the option card, and the line is yours to style.

A product's draw tool is set when the product is created (Admin → Products → Visibility → On Contract → Drawing shape type), and an admin can change a product from Scribble to any other tool at any time.

Drawing is read-only on a sold appointment or on the pre-existing layers of a sold change order, so on those the toolbar will be inert regardless of layer type.

Screenshot coming soonMac — Choosing the layer in the layer sidebar/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-01-mac.png Screenshot coming sooniPad — Choosing the layer in the layer sidebar/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-01-ipad.png

Step 2 — Select the Scribble tool

If you picked a product layer whose product is set to draw as a scribble, Bidvio already selected Scribble for you. The toolbar highlights the Scribble button and you can skip ahead to drawing.

If you picked a general layer, tap Scribble in the drawing toolbar on the left — the icon is a scribble. The button highlights to show it's the active tool.

Screenshot coming soonMac — Selecting the Scribble tool in the toolbar/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-02-mac.png Screenshot coming sooniPad — Selecting the Scribble tool in the toolbar/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-02-ipad.png

Step 3 — Apply a drawing preset, or style the scribble yourself

There are three ways to style a scribble on a general or custom layer.

Apply a drawing preset (the fast path)

Tap the Presets menu at the top of the toolbar (the "P" icon). It lists every drawing preset your company has configured. Tap one and Bidvio sets the active tool, fill color, stroke color, stroke width, stroke style, and label to match.

A drawing preset is a named, saved combination of tool + styling + label. It's how a company standardizes the look of a recurring annotation across every rep without anyone having to remember the recipe. Presets are configured by an admin in Admin → Appointment Format → Drawing presets and apply to the next shape you draw — not retroactively. The Presets menu is locked on a product layer.

Customize the styling for this one scribble

Scribble supports the full styling surface because the trace can be drawn as an open curve or read as a closed region enclosed by your trace:

Fill color — the colour inside an enclosed region.
Stroke color — the path itself.
Stroke width — choose from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50, or 100 px. Stroke width also affects how finely the tool samples your finger: at heavier strokes the tool drops more points along the path, which keeps a thick line smooth.
Stroke style — Solid, Dashed, or Dotted.

For handwriting use, a thin stroke (1–3 px) in a dark color reads best — the line stays crisp and the letters don't blur into each other.

On a product layer, skip the styling step entirely

The styling controls (and the Presets menu) are locked. The product's preset is the point: every scribble drawn for a given product should look the same so the install crew reads them consistently. If you want a one-off styling for a scribble that represents a product, draw it on a general layer instead and explain the intent in Customer Wills or Contractor Wills — but you'll lose the contribution to the option card's quantity.

Setting styling — by preset or by hand — before you draw is the right order. To restyle an existing scribble, erase and redraw.

Screenshot coming soonMac — Presets menu and stroke controls/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-03-mac.png Screenshot coming sooniPad — Presets menu and stroke controls/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-03-ipad.png

Step 4 — Trace the shape with one continuous gesture

With Scribble active, touch the canvas where you want to start the trace and drag your finger (or an Apple Pencil) along the path you want the shape to follow. The preview follows in real time. Release when you reach the end.

A few details about the trace:

Bidvio samples your finger position at regular intervals along the path; the spacing is at least a small minimum and scales up with the stroke width, so a heavier stroke captures fewer redundant points without losing fidelity. The result is a smoothed curve rather than a literal pixel-for-pixel trace.
Lifting your finger ends the shape. There's no way to extend a scribble after lifting — to keep drawing, start a new scribble that picks up where the previous one ended. For handwriting that's longer than one continuous stroke (most words are), each stroke is its own scribble shape.
A very short trace (a near-tap with almost no movement) is discarded; the tool needs at least a small drag to commit a shape.

If Snap to Grid is on, every sampled point snaps to the nearest grid intersection as you drag. That's almost never what you want with a scribble — the whole point of the tool is to follow a curve that doesn't align with the grid — so turn snap off before tracing or writing.

Screenshot coming soonMac — Tracing a scribble/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-04-mac.png Screenshot coming sooniPad — Tracing a scribble/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-04-ipad.png

Step 5 — Reposition or reshape after drawing

To move or reshape a scribble after the fact:

Tap the Select tool in the toolbar (the hand icon).
Tap the path. A dot handle appears at each sampled point along the trace — there can be a lot of them for a long shape, and for handwriting they tend to cluster tightly along each stroke.
Drag a point handle to push that part of the path; the curve reshapes around it. Drag anywhere on the path body to translate the whole shape without reshaping it.

Snap to Grid applies the same way during these edits, but again is rarely what you want for a curve. Reshaping the scribble on the canvas doesn't change the product's quantity on the option card — the canvas is illustrative — but if the scribble's new shape and the measurement values on the layer no longer agree, update the measurement inputs separately.

There's no in-Select way to add or remove sample points on the path. To change the underlying point count or smoothness, erase and redraw. The same applies for changing fill, stroke color, width, or style: erase and redraw.

For handwriting, a typo is fastest fixed by erasing the affected stroke(s) and rewriting them rather than trying to reshape the existing strokes into the right letters.

Screenshot coming soonMac — Select tool showing the scribble's sample-point handles/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-05-mac.png Screenshot coming sooniPad — Select tool showing the scribble's sample-point handles/screenshots/support-running-an-appointment-freeform-tool-05-ipad.png

Step 6 — What ends up on the contract

A scribble only shows up on the contract if the layer it lives on is included in the option being sold. Every layer carries a per-option inclusion toggle in the layer sidebar with three states:

Included (green check) — the layer renders on the contract drawing for this option and its products count on the option's totals.
Recommended (orange triangle) — the layer shows in the recommendations view so you can pitch it, but it's not on the contract until you (or the customer) flips it to Included.
Excluded (red X) — the layer doesn't render on the contract and doesn't count on totals for this option.

That distinction matters for scribbles in both directions. A product scribble on a layer that's only Recommended doesn't add its product to the option's totals, and the scribble itself won't appear on the contract drawing or the job information sheet for that option. An annotation or handwritten scribble on a layer that isn't Included doesn't carry through to the documents either.

When a scribble's layer is included, the canvas renders on the contract, the proposal, and the job information sheet. Product scribbles carry their product's name as a label; annotation and handwritten scribbles render with the fill, color, and style you drew them in — handwriting appears in your handwriting, alongside everything else on the canvas. The drawing is often more durable than the prose around it: where they conflict, most crews follow the drawing first.