Pencil 3.0.3

Pencil is a free drawing program that helps users to create mockups on their PCs. Its friendly graphic user interface provides ready access to a collection of built-in shapes that can be used to create interfaces for both mobile and desktop platforms. The prototyping tool is available for all platforms.

Using Pencil

Pencil gave us the opportunity to start building app prototypes as soon as we installed it because it included pre-installed iOS and Android UI stencils and wireframes. Other pre-installed shape collections include desktop and web UI shapes, flowchart elements, basic web elements and general-purpose shapes. We also had the option to download more collections that the Pencil community has created. Installing a collection only required a drag-and-drop operation. The latest version supports connectors that are useful in creating diagrams. The connectors work well with the included flowcharts to create great diagrams.

The collections of shapes are arranged on the left part of the program interface, with the working space covering most of the screen. Once we had created some drawings, we could switch between Collections and My Stuff.

Making drawings was relatively easy because the program included common drawing features. We sketched things easily and refined them as they took shape. Alternatively, we could open existing images via drag-and-drop or file browser functions. We included both plain and rich text in our drawings, and we could zoom in and out to work better on specific parts. The Copy Shape Format function made it easy to replicate shapes we wanted to use multiple times.

We also had the option of finding clipart online using keywords. Pencil integrates with OpenClipart.org that provides clipart in vector format, which means you can scale them without sacrificing quality. Adding the clipart into drawings is as simple as dragging and dropping them to the desired locations.

We chose the toolbars we wanted displayed by right-clicking on the toolbar section and selecting or de-selecting options. The Options menu under Tools also allowed us to make some configurations.

Pencil allowed us to export drawings to a variety of formats, including rasterized PNG, Adobe PDF, Multi-page SVG files, OpenOffice documents and single web pages. We could also print our drawings directly from the program interface.

Conclusion

If you want a powerful but free drawing program, then Pencil is a good choice. Even beginners will find it relatively easy to use because it works on the "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) basis.