Some Adobe Flash projects require you to draw a lot of arrows. This can get tedious. So, many years ago, I wrote an Arrow drawing tool. It was written for CS2, but still works well enough in CS4.

You can:

• Draw single sided arrows
• Draw double sided arrows
• Draw curved line arrows
• Adjust the width of the line
• Adjust the ratio of the arrow head width to the line width

Original description

Draws arrows in the authoring environment. Holding shift constrains to vertical, horizontal or 45 degrees. Hold control to set an anchoring point to bend the arrow on. Available options in the Property Window are Arrow Width, Arrow Head Multiplier and Arrow Head Location. Arrow Width is the actual width in pixels of the arrow. Arrow Head Multiplier is how many times larger than the Arrow Width that the arrow’s head will be. Arrow width = 5; ArrowHead Multiplier = 3; then the arrowhead will be 15 pixels across. Arrow Head Location options are ’end’ and ‘start end’; which will give you double or single ended arrows.

To install/use:

• Download the MXP file
• Open Adobe Extension Manager
• File -> Install Extension
• Select the file
• Start/re-start Flash Pro
• Go to Edit->Customize Tools Panel (Windows) or Flash->Customize Tools Panel(OSX)
• Add the ArrowLine Tool to the list of available tools. I like it as secondary tool under the standard Line tool.

This extension is tested to work with Adobe Flash Professional version up to CS4. It may work on CS5, but will not work in CS6 or Creative Cloud without modifications. Please contact me if you are interested in licensing it for use in Adobe Creative Cloud or in other Adobe products.