← Suite overview /DrawPyCS
◳ Part of the locate management suite

The drawing board that already knows your trade.

DrawPyCS is field-sketch CAD scoped to one job — turning what's underground into a clean, code-accurate print. Pick a utility, draw the line, and it comes out the right color, weight and style every time. Run it on its own, or dock it inside a ticket so the sketch saves with the job.

18 utility line types30+ field symbolsAPWA color code
How a sketch comes together

Three moves from blank page to print-ready.

01

Pick a tool

Choose a utility line, a symbol or an annotation from the Quick Access panel. Every tool carries its own color, weight and style — no properties to set first.

02

Draw it

Click to place points, snap to the grid, reshape vertex by vertex, drop leader labels and dimensions. Undo anything, rubber-band select the rest.

03

Hand it off

Print, print-preview, or export a crisp PNG for the ticket. The drawing itself saves to a compact, portable XML file.

18 line tools · the APWA color code, built in

Every buried utility, already the right color.

Pick a tool and draw — the line comes out in the uniform color your crews already mark by, so the print reads correctly to anyone in the trade without a single manual color pick.

Blue · Potable water

Water

Water · Water CC (curb-stop)
Yellow · Gas / oil / steam

Gas & pressure mains

Gas · HP Gas · MP Gas · IP Gas · gas stub · end-of-main
Red · Electric power

Electrical & power

Electrical · Power
Orange · Communications

Telecom, TV & fibre

Telecomm · TV · FOTS fibre · duct/conduit · City IT
Green · Sewer & drain

Sewer

Sewer
Site · layout & boundary

Site & surface

Common trench · rail road · fence line · guard rail

Plus free-form primitives — polyline, double polyline, spline, Bézier curve, ellipse and rectangle — for anything the standard tools don't cover.

The symbol drawer

Drop the fixtures you mark every day.

30+ field symbols, sized on screen and printed to a consistent scale. Place, drag to size, rotate — each keyed to its utility color so a valve reads as gas and a hydrant reads as water.

Hydrant
Water CC
Valve
Gas stub
Manhole
Catch basin
Transformer
Switchgear
Pole
Street light
Pedestal
Hand hole
Pull box
Vault
Tree
Building
Test point
+ anchor · bell pole · hydro pole · dog house · conflict · approved · coord ref · traffic controller & detector…
Layers, done the locator's way

Hand hydro a clean print without deleting the gas.

Every shape carries its kind. Toggle a kind and every line of that type hides at once — so one drawing serves every utility, and the gas stays separable from the hydro the way the contract demands. There are two kinds of "hidden", and the difference matters.

The tab eye · persistent

Blocklist a whole kind

Click a Quick Access tab's eye and that kind is hidden for the whole drawing — on screen and in the exported PNG or print. It's saved with the file, so the gas-vs-hydro split travels with the deliverable.

  • Saved to the drawing XML
  • Honored by the printed & exported deliverable
  • One drawing, many single-utility prints
Focus / solo · transient

Show one layer at a time

Step through layers one at a time to check your work — a screen-only "solo" that never persists. Save the file or export a ticket image while focused and it still contains every layer, so you can't accidentally ship a one-utility sketch.

  • Screen & hit-test only
  • Never written to a saved file
  • Export always includes all layers
Quick Access presets

Tabs that are tools and layers at once.

Group your go-to tools into tabs. Each tab owns the kinds inside it, so the same header that switches tools also toggles that layer. Style a tool once and every line you draw from it matches.

Per-tool overrides

Each preset can override line color, width and style — for both lines of a double line — plus fill, font size and text color. Leave any unset to use the shape's default.

colorwidthstylefont

Drag to organize

Reorder tools within a tab or drag them between tabs. Stable IDs mean several variants of the same line — three Power presets, say — coexist and move independently.

drag & dropstable IDs

Solo & overrides survive

A focus bar walks you through one layer at a time; per-tab font-size and text-color overrides keep labels consistent. Your groups persist between sessions.

focus barremembered
The full toolbox

Everything a locate sketch needs, nothing it doesn't.

Shapes

  • Polyline
  • Double polyline
  • Spline
  • Bézier curve
  • Ellipse
  • Rectangle
  • Image import

Annotations

  • Text label
  • Text with arrow
  • North arrow
  • Dimension
  • Measure line
  • Work area
  • Segment labels

Editing

  • Undo / redo
  • Copy / paste
  • Duplicate
  • Reshape vertices
  • Rotate
  • Rubber-band select
  • Move up / down (z)

View

  • Grid + snap
  • Zoom / fit
  • Page boundary
  • Auto-grow page
  • Control points
  • Antialiasing
  • Properties panel
Output & integration

Prints clean, saves small, drops into your ticket.

Print & PNG

Print-preview and print to any page, or export a crisp PNG. Exports always contain every layer, even if you were soloing one on screen.

Portable XML files

Drawings save to a compact, human-readable XML format — schema-compatible with the original draw_py tool and written culture-safe, so files open the same on any machine.

Docks into the ticket

The same drawing engine embeds inside Field Ticket Manager as a dialog, hands the finished sketch back as an image, and pairs drawings to aux pages by position.

Platform
Windows
Native desktop
Built on
.NET 10
WinForms · GDI+
File format
Open XML
draw_py-compatible
Works
Offline
Standalone or embedded
Draw one of your own locates

See DrawPyCS on a real sketch.

Book a walkthrough and we'll draw one of your jobs live — utility lines, symbols, layers and a print-ready page — then show it docked inside a ticket.

// Or email cooper.pearce99@gmail.com directly.