Modifying Primitives

With Flash’s rectangle- and oval-primitive tools, you create shapes with paths defined by a set of properties specific to that shape. You can’t change the outline of a primitive-shape freely the way you can reshape the outline of a merge-shape or drawing-object. You can change the primitive’s defining properties by dragging control points in the shape or by setting new values in the Property inspector.

To modify a rectangle-primitive

1. Using the selection tool, select the rectangle-primitive you want to modify.

The shape’s bounding box highlights, and control points appear . Each corner has two control points. For sharp corners with a corner-radius setting of 0, the points sit directly on top of one another. For rounded corners, a control point appears at both ends of the arc that defines the corner. The two points work in concert—dragging one moves the other.