Arrette Sketch drafting tools vs Inkle Visualizer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Arrette Sketch drafting tools
Create hand-drawn designs at a measurable scale, ideal for architects and designers. This app offers a simplified drawing experience with tools like freehand pens and an adjustable grid, allowing for easy sharing via email or saving to your device.
- Freehand drawing pens with vector scaling
- Adjustable grid system (metric/decimal feet)
- Load base images to draw on
- Lasso tool for selections
- Easy sharing via email
- Save drawings to device
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Rated #1 Technical App for Architects by ArchDaily! Arrette Sketch for iPad is an app for designers who want to draw freehand while maintaining a measurable drawing scale like vector drafting tools. Architects, urban planners, surveyors, home remodelers, field archaeologists and dozens of other kinds of professionals will find this app useful. Unlike other vector drawing tools, Arrette Sketch is simple to learn and use. Arrette Sketch is the basic version of Arrette Scale for iPad, available separately in the iTunes App Store. Compared to our professional version, Arrette Sketch is limited only in three ways: 1) distance and area measurement tools are disabled, 2) Edge drawing tools are disabled, and 3) users cannot export to PDF for sharing. For those functions, ideally suited for professionals working in business, Arrette Scale is the appropriate tool. Arrette Philosophy Arrette provides the platform to begin design work and generate ideas without moving too quickly to rigid straight lines and curves. We want to help you draw much as you would normally draw on paper, but to give you the extra tools and ways to share your work that make your life easier and make the design process simpler and more productive. The basic drawing structure is a familiar one - drawing layers which can be overlayed on a base image. The Grid keeps you aware of the size of what you're drawing at any scale. When you're ready, you can easily share drawings by email or save them to your device. We've designed Arrette to be extremely easy to learn. In a few minutes, you'll understand how to zoom and scale your canvas, draw lines, and load base images to work on top of. Our tools will seem familiar from other structured drawing applications, but every tool we've built has been simplified and optimized with scale in mind. Uses for Arrette Sketch for iPad: * An urban designer drafts plans for a new sub-division in a small town * A real estate agent snaps a photograph of a living space and begins to sketch out ideas for staging * A new home owner sketches the plan for an elaborate garden in the back yard * A construction manager notes progress on a work site, sending annotated precision-scale documents back to the general contractor live from the work site For these uses Arrette Sketch is a great tool for drawing freehand scale sketches, whether at home, on the go, or at work. For professional work, which includes sharing original Arrette documents for review, annotation, and modification, Arrette Scale is better suited for those purposes. Included drawing tools in Arrette Sketch (free application): * Freehand drawing pens that scale like vector lines but are as easy to use as pencil and paper * An adjustable grid system that you can easily flip between the metric system and decimal feet * The ability to load base images to draw on top of; base images respect their original scale and direction when the document is zoomed or panned * A lasso tool to select, move, copy and paste previously drawn lines * Layers, for separating out parts of composite objects or for adding new ideas to an existing document that overlay earlier designs * An eraser tool, for revising your designs or removing objects from previous work * The ability to adjust the width of all lines globally even after the lines have been drawn Additional professional features in Arrette Scale (available separately): * A tool for drawing perfectly straight lines, arrays of parallel lines, arcs and circles * Distance and area measurement tools for measuring the lengths, perimeters and areas of arbitrary pathways in your drawing at precise scale Document sharing features in Arrette Sketch: * Save your work to your Photo Gallery * Share raster versions of your work with anyone via email, Twitter, or Facebook Additional sharing features in Arrette Scale: * Send PDFs with scale and direction information to colleagues, clients, and other parties via email
Inkle Visualizer
This app helps you design intricate patterns for inkle looms. It offers tools for organizing charts, quickly painting colors, and tracking your warping process. Share your creations easily with others.
- Organize charts with folders
- Quickly paint colors with palettes
- Real-time color updates
- Mirror mode for symmetrical design
- Warping thread tracker
- Offline data storage
- Apple Pencil support
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Inkle Visualizer is an app for your iPad / iPhone that improves the way you create designs for plain weave, warp faced bands, typically woven on an Inkle loom. Library features + Organize your chart library using folders. Easily drag and drop to reorganize. + Thumbnail of each chart makes it easy to find a specific chart + Search library easily, finding folders and charts whose name matches the search text + Sort by name, width, created date, updated date + Share full sized image of your chart. Great for use on social media like Ravelry or Instagram + Share Inkle Visualizer chart files to other users of Inkle Visualizer via email, Air Drop or to the File app. Editing Features + Quickly paint colors on your band by tapping the draw-down + Each chart has a Color Palette you build to use in designing your chart + Update a color in the Palette and the chart reflects the change immediately + Swap colors used in your chart quickly from those available in your Color Palette + Import colors from other charts in your library + Use Mirror mode to keep both halves of your band in sync + Add threads + Duplicate or flip selected threads + Multiple levels of undo/redo while editing + Lock chart to prevent editing + Share full size image or thumbnail image + Reorder your colors inside the Palette using drag and drop Warping Tracker + Easily keep track of which thread you're currently warping + Tap screen or keyboard to move forward to the next thread, and mark off previous thread Other features + Stores data locally on device, does not require internet connectivity + Supports Dark Mode + Works with Apple Pencil For more information and support check out our Ravelry user group: https://www.ravelry.com/groups/knit-foundry-user-group
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Arrette Sketch drafting tools at Free against Inkle Visualizer's $5.99. Arrette Sketch drafting tools also leads on iOS requirement (12.4 vs 17.5). Inkle Visualizer's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 3.4) and ads (none vs shown). On review sentiment, ratings volume, update cadence and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Arrette Sketch drafting tools is free to download; Inkle Visualizer costs $5.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Inkle Visualizer holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 9 and 8 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 56% of Arrette Sketch drafting tools's written reviews are positive against 50% of Inkle Visualizer's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Arrette Sketch drafting tools ships an update every 3 months, Inkle Visualizer every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on June 8, 2026 and September 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Arrette Sketch drafting tools | Inkle Visualizer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $5.99 |
| Rating | 3.4 (9 ratings) | 5.0 (8 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 55.6% of reviews — better | 50.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 9 — better | 8 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #187 — better |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 12.4 — better | 17.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 53 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Arrette, Inc. | Knit Foundry LLC |
Customer experience
Arrette Sketch drafting tools
Inkle Visualizer
In-app purchases
Arrette Sketch drafting tools
No in-app purchases
Inkle Visualizer
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Arrette Sketch drafting tools free?
Is Inkle Visualizer free?
Which has better reviews, Arrette Sketch drafting tools or Inkle Visualizer?
Do Arrette Sketch drafting tools or Inkle Visualizer have ads?
Which is updated more often, Arrette Sketch drafting tools or Inkle Visualizer?
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