Drawing of shapes

Hi Brian

The advantage of using shapes and having a new layer created for each shape is that each shape  remains editable. You can move them, resize them, change color, change the weighting of the lines...etc

If your layers panel looks unmanageable with lots of shapes just put them in a group, name the group "furniture" and collapse the group when not editing the individual items.

Dave

brianc30659103  wrote I have anxiety trying to understand why such a simple tool is so damn complicated.

There lies your problem Brian, Photoshop is far from a simple tool. The other guys have told you how to create an unfilled rectangle from shapes and paths, but I don't really understand why you don't simply draw a rectangular selection on your layer

Sure it takes longer than with a vector program , but Photoshop isn't a vector program. The other alternative if you want to draw many rectangles and vary the size and orientation is to create a brush.

Create your rectangle as a Vector Shape layer using Brad or Semaphoric's method. Here it's a shape but a path will work. You need a white background.

With the upper layer selected

Give the brush a name

And with the brush tool selected just click on the layer you want to add too. Using the square bracket key you can resize the rectangle and you can also use any color.

Thanks you all... I’m aware of those steps... to have to merge when I should be able to simply make a box without unselecting layers I don’t want to merge when you have 50 layers.....

brianc30659103  wrote A want to simply make squares and circle outlines on the “furniture“ layer.... I have anxiety trying to understand why such a simple tool is so damn complicated.

Just select all the layers you want one one layer in your layers panel and right click and 'Merge Layers' then you will have them all on one layer.

There is .....

If you just want a square outline be sure your fill setting is set to no fill.