How to draw multiple shapes with the same style?

[wasdeze]

I am editing an existing document in LibreOffice Draw. All I want to do is add a number of freehand lines and text boxes.

This is annoying the absolute crap out of me however, because for every new text box the font resets to an ugly font at huge font size, and every time I draw a line it resets to a very thin line.

How can I just set the styles once and then focus on doing what I’m supposed to be doing?

I assume it has something to do with “styles”, which is already a pain because this is just a one-off thing, but it would be alright if I can figure out how to make it actually use a style for new objects. But, it seems I can’t convince it to use anything but the default useless styles for every new object. I must be doing something wrong. I’m just so frustrated with this, please help me find the simple button or setting that I feel like I must be missing somewhere.

TLDR: I just wanna draw some text and lines, can’t figure out how to tell LibreOffice Draw which style to use when drawing new things

[Grantler]

Try out: gallery | New Theme. It preserves Fonts etc., background, line. And it lasts long for each new file (Draw, Writer…)


Also recommended:

Clone Formatting: Can copy drawing’s properties; twice: can copy text properties subsequently.

… or check @Lupp’s advice.

[blashrkh]

WRITER: see related post how to edit line presets / styles for drawing consistent lines
within WRITER (not draw)

[Lupp]

Define your ShapeStyles (based on examples) as you want them.

“New things” are always created with the default settings.
Any newly created shape is then easily “restyled” by a simple DoubleClick in the Styles panel.

You can not assign different styles to the standard drawing tools, however.
You can modify the ‘Default’ ShapeStyle with effect for all shapes having applied this style, and for new shapes.
If you are ready to spend a lot of time, you can program your own tools and assign the developed code to your own icons.

[keme]

It can be done

For shapes you can preselect a style. This does not work for lines ; the style for line drawing seems to be hardcoded to a particular style. So, your text boxes should be good, your freehand lines need that extra click to apply style

• Create an object style to your own liking.
• With no object selected, double click the style item in the list
• Were an object selected at the time, double click would have applied the style to that object, like Lupp says
• When no object is selected, double clicking a style name makes the style “sticky”
• Pick your drawing tool
• Draw your object
• The colors, line weights, font settings etc. should now be according to the “stickied” style.
• Sometimes the style becomes “unstuck”, and you need to double click again. Take care to unselect everything first if you have multiple styles in use.

If you decide to change an object back to using the default style, the “fallback” may seem somewhat erratic at times. This is due to some default settings being “outside” of the style. E.g. font settings have a default above style level, and the default style does not override this. Applying default style will not apply default font, unless you have explicitly set a font for the default style.