FAQs

Can I Use Content Created in DrawShield for....(whatever)?

DrawShield works by taking existing SVG images and placing, scaling and colouring them to assemble a complete image. The source images that are used in the creation of content are subject to a variety of license conditions, however the majority of these are released under Creative Commons licences, hence the final image as produced by the DrawShield program is released under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA licence. You may therefore do anything with that image as permitted by that licence and you should refer to the Creative Commons License page for more information on what these permissions are - it is very short and easy to read so please check it out, it should answer most of your questions. If you enter your blazon in the "Create from Blazon" page then the appropriate artists are listed in the Notes section below the image.

If you intend to use ANY coat of arms in an official or commercial situation you are strongly advised to take legal advice as in many jusrisdictions arms are protected by legislation in addition to copyright.

How Do I Achieve ...(whatever).. in DrawShield?

You have a number of options to find answers:

1. Use the search bar in the Navigation Menu to see if you can find the topic in the user manual
2. Look through the gallery to see if you can find a similar effect the click on the gallery image itself to see the blazon and how it has been constructed
3. Ask a question on the DrawShield Discord server
4. Use the Contact menu to contact the Author, although I might not always be able to respond very quickly due to other commitments

Can You Please Add...(whatever)...to DrawShield?

Possibly! Suggestions are welcome but our time is limited. Suggestions for new charges are more likely to succeed if you can provide a link to a relevant image, and even better a clear SVG image that is either free to use or CC-BY-SA licenced! Preference is given to things that have genuine heraldic precedence but other ideas will also be considered. The current list of suggestions is shown on the Github Issues List.

How Much Does DrawShield.net Cost to Run?

DrawShield.net is hosted on an AWS Lightsail instance. That instance, along with the cost of backup snapshots, email services and the annual costs of the domain name are about $10 per month. DrawShield also used the LightSail Content Delivery Network (CDN) - I don't have a good idea of the costs of this yet as we are still in our Free first year but hopefully it will not exceed another $10 per month when we start paying for it. We may need to add another $5/month or so soon for a larger server instance.

DrawShield development work is carried out for free by its developer community. We do gratefully acknowledge the support of JetBrains who provide a free licence for their development toolset, primarily PHPStorm, in which most of the development work is done.

DrawShield does receive donations towards the running costs from its user, for which we are very grateful. Any excess donations above the monthly charges are passed on to our contributing artists if we can identify them.

What is the meaning of ...(whatever)... in Heraldry?

Almost certainly none, in the way that you were hoping for. That's not to say that particular objects or colours might have had some special meaning to the person that originally chose them, but those meanings are either attached to the object iself (lions are "courageous") or just means something to that particular person (an allusion to their name perhaps). There is no, widely accepted, set of meanings to anything that is specifically heraldic in context. This may be a disappointment to you so it is discussed further here.