Pencil Project

It helps, actually completes my DIY project illustrative instructions in wood and metal shop, quickly because of its simplicity in user friendly selections.

Big new update v3.1 was just published on New Year's day, first one since 2019! https://github.com/evolus/pencil/blob/master/RELEASE/RELEASE-NOTE-311.md

Positives:

• It is capable of most things that other software like XD or Figma can do
• It is open source
• It can be extended with collections and such
• It lets you edit things like images on the fly using whatever program you want, and it works well

Negatives:

• The difference in polish between it and other solutions are beyond astronomical
  • you can't measure distances
  • snap lines (midpoints and such) only show when dragging and dropping, not when using the keyboard
  • things like shadows or round corners are only available through either plugins or code
  • almost everything else needs either a plugin (or part of a collection) or to be coded
• At the time of writing this, the project's last commit was in october, it's been almost 6 months since their last commit
• Adding to the commits issue, the software itself needs a ton of love and and even more work to make it abstract enough for people who want to do something other than program their designs.

TLDR; the program is nice if you like spending hours coding shadows and round corners onto your rectangles.

Free and open source, save any group of objects as a template, link together objects and screens to create quick wireframe prototypes, and it has an open source model for icon sets/UI elements. What's not to love.

First of all, "official website" link is wrong. I wanted to update it but there are already pending changes.

Correct link is: http://pencil.evolus.vn/

Order of events:

1. Evolus creates and updates a great tool up to version 2.0.5.
2. Development seems to stall.
3. Another chap forks and continues development using the same name and continuing version numbers: https://github.com/prikhi/pencil
4. This chap (as of this writing) hasn't updated it in 4 months.
5. Evolus introduces new version 3.0 still in beta and puts their code in github as well (link on their site)

Chap that forked should have changed the name and restarted version numbers not to confuse anyone.

I've tested 3.0 beta 2 and it works well in portable mode (installs in user local data) and doesn't need admin access. Save, open, export functionality works well even with multiple pages. You can't copy/paste out of it as it uses own XML data format. To integrate to other tools you must export (to PNG). I use it for quick sketches. When necessity calls for quality and precise drawings, I use LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.

Few bad things about 3.0 beta 2 is that install is super silent and quick because it doesn't meed permissions, so there is no uninstaller. In local user folder program/data is stored in ".pencil", "AppData\Local\Pencil" and "AppData\Roaming\Pencil". Shortcuts to be manually deleted as well.

[Edited by nikolakovaevi, July 15]