Sketchpad Tool Bar
The main tools used to create geometric figures in Geometer's Sketchpad are located in a vertical tool bar of buttons at the left side of the application window. Some of these buttons have a small black triangle at the bottom right. Clicking once on any of these buttons reveals a list of menu items. For example, here we have clicked on the Segment button and dragged over to the Line menu item. Once we release the mouse, this tool becomes the active tool in that group.

Lines and Segments
To illustrate the use of a tool in the Toolbar, we will create a line defined by two points. Click on the Line Button and then click somewhere in the window and drag. Notice that Sketchpad creates a point (A) where you first clicked and a second point(B) where you released the mouse. These define the line. Note that Sketchpad does not automatically show labels for points. To see the label, we can right-click (Mac OS: ctrl-click) on a point and choose 'Show Label.' If we want Sketchpad to automatically label new points, we can go to the Edit menu and select Preferences... In the dialog that pops up, we can click on the 'Text' tab and then click 'Show Labels Automatically -- For All new Points.'

Now, let's create a segment. Click on the Line Button and drag over to select the Segment menu item. We have changed the functionality of the Line tool so that it is now a Segment tool. This is a fundamental technique used to provide for multiple tools with just a few buttons. With the Segment Tool now active, click and drag to create a segment.