The Sketch guide

Sketch is for drawing your experiment setup — the diagram at the top of a lab report that shows how everything was connected. The equipment is already drawn for you; your job is just to arrange and label it. Sketch needs a free Plot45 account — sign up or sign in first.

Placing equipment

The Sketch room: the equipment palette on the left and a labelled Hooke's law setup — retort stand, ruler, spring and hanging mass — on the canvas. — The Sketch room, with a finished Hooke's law setup on the canvas.

The palette on the left holds real lab equipment — beakers, thermometers, burners, cells, bulbs, meters, stands and more — drawn as clean schematic symbols, the kind you see in a textbook. Click a symbol (or drag it) to place it on the page.

The palette's category rail: Shapes, Glass, Heat, Electric, Mech and Optics, with the Shapes set open. — The categories: Shapes, Glassware, Heating, Electrical, Mechanics, Optics.

Arranging things

Move — drag a symbol, or nudge it with the arrow keys for small steps.
Resize — drag a corner handle.
Rotate — use the rotation control in the inspector on the right.
Front and back — the inspector's order buttons bring a symbol forward or send it behind another.

The inspector also sets a symbol's line weight and fill, so your diagram stays consistent.

Labels and arrows

Use the text tool to name the parts ("50 g mass", "retort stand") and the line and arrow tools to point each label at the thing it names. Short labels with a straight arrow read best — exactly what a mark scheme wants to see.

Exporting your diagram

SVG or PNG — crisp output on plain white paper, ready for a printed report or a slide.
Straight into Write — save the sketch to your workspace, then in Write use the sketch-insert button to drop it into your report as a numbered figure.