A method, apparatus, and article of manufacture provide for drawing a graphical element in a computer-implemented drawing program. An existing instance of a graphical element pattern that defines a graphical distribution of multiple occurrences of a source graphical element is identified in a computer-implemented drawing program. A second graphical element is then associated with the existing instance of the graphical element pattern. In response to the associating, multiple occurrences of the second graphical element are positioned in accordance with the graphical element pattern.