Nik, if it can save you any energy, be sure you show a proof of concept to your client/colleague before you get too hip-deep into this. We've tried to do similar things in the past with little success. The issue is not technical, it's more of a usability issue.
If you provide a VISIBLE area in which to draw, the end result will be that you're defeating the purpose of drawing freehand. You might as well just click on the area you've dedicated. (Remember, these are usability opinions, and your mileage may very. The crucial thing is that, in what you've described, your opinion typically doesn't matter. It's the collective opinion of your users and how well they understand, and can complete, the task that matters.) If you want to draw anywhere, you can create an empty movie clip as a canvas that allows you to draw over everything and, as you said, do a stroke with no fill so you don't have to worry about closing the path, and it looks more natural like a marker on a whiteboard. You can just use lineTo and an interval if you want something simple, or smooth out the line using curveTo and an interval. You can then determine the geographical center of the circle and see if that coordinate matches up with a hitTest on the answer clip. You can't use hit test between circle and answer unless the answers are no where near each other. But, you can say: center of circle is at 100,100, and answerMC.hitTest(100,100,false) (No shape flag will be easier, I think.) The problem will be one of user satisfaction. How hard is it to draw a circle with the mouse? How accurately can they get it over the answer? How many times do they have to do it? For example, doing this for a five-question quiz is great. But for a 20 question quiz it is unbearably tedious. You want to just click the answer and move on. Anyway, I suggest that you spend a little time with testers to see how they react before committing. Rich _______________________________________________ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com