"Reprint" OmniGraffle (ii) basic drawing and tooling

The flowchart and mind map in the basic drawing have a common point in the drawing, that is, we hope that the software can reduce the interference to the thinking process as much as possible in the design, and help us to finish the record in a simple and effective way before processing and typesetting.

Fast recording is the primary task, because many times the idea is fleeting. In the face of the computer and the beautiful templates and molds in the software, often we forget the record when we really need is like a paper pen-like simplicity, beauty and layout is in the back, this order is very important.

OmniGraffle Template "automatic layout" Classification provides an example of an organization chart and mind map, when a new document is created based on such a template, the page already contains a simple legend, and the layout panel Automatic layout is checked, which means that the objects you create are automatically arranged according to the styles in chart layout. For the chart of center divergence and tree structure, the design of OmniGraffle has greatly improved the efficiency of drawing. However, if you are drawing a flowchart, you need to turn off automatic layout, because the OmniGraffle contains several simple layout schemes that do not apply to flowcharts, and another drawing software yEd more advantageous.

Settings for the page

When you create a new document based on a template, the settings for the page may already be included, including the size of the page, the units, and the location origin of the ruler. The Chart class template also tick "auto layout" in the chart layout, except for the organization chart or mind map type drawing, which does not need to be checked by other drawings.

The "Multiple size printer Forms" item in the page size sets the page as a datum multiplier for the entire page, and if you also check AutoFit layout size, the page size automatically becomes "2 pages" or more pages to host when the drawing content goes beyond one page. By removing the "Multiple Size printer form" Check, we can define the page size with a specific width, such as 960pxx1024px.

Settings for the page

The setting of the unit depends on the purpose of your drawing, the software prototype or the website we will be in pixels, the office plan needs to be in meters or feet, the plane drawing usually also need to set the appropriate scale, such as: 1cm = 1 meters. The origin is the datum point of the object's position in the page, which is generally based on the outer frame of the page, and holding down the origin position of the upper-left corner of the ruler can be used to customize the origin position so that the object's position in the page is set. The location of the origin changes to appear in the page as a blue line.

The precise positioning of the Page object is achieved by setting the coordinate values, which are usually calculated to obtain accurate values based on the original origin coordinates of the page. Adjusting the origin position makes the relative positioning of the object easier, and in the printed section of the printout, it is possible to keep the page blank by setting the line mate origin and to better locate the objects in the page, in order to be consistent with the print content of the pages in Word.

Adding a Composition Object

There are two strategies when plotting a chart, one is the first relationship, the other is the post-content relationship. The specific practice of these two strategies for OmniGraffle is to use the toolbar's? chart tool to create a chart, or to use the outline view to create a chart in the contents panel, both ways.

OmniGraffle Flowchart Drawing

For content that has already been conceived in paper or other software, we often use the toolbar's "chart" function in the OmniGraffle to quickly build up the structure of the chart, which takes precedence over the relationship, arrangement, and Order of objects, " Chart tool This mode of creating an object once per click is faster.

Double-click the "d" key to enter the chart creation mode (press once "d" to insert the object automatically back to the selection mode), click the page blank place to add the object, continue to click to create a child with connectors, press and hold the "?" key to create a separate item; hold "?" Create other objects of the sibling; hold "?". Creates a parent object. Mastering the combination of these special keys and the "Chart" tool can improve the efficiency of your composition. When in chart mode, you can press and hold the "v" key at any time to move and adjust the position of the object, and then back to the chart creation mode.

In the chart tool insert mode, the editing area is not suitable for modifying the contents of a text label, and if you want to modify the contents of the text label, you can modify it in the contents panel on the left.

"catalog panel modifies the text label very conveniently, on the other hand, it is also the home of the" first content after relationship "strategy, where you can enter text content directly, through the"tab","shift+tab"keys to indent the control hierarchy, or drag directly to adjust the hierarchical relationship. The hierarchical relationship here is the automatic addition of the lines between objects in the editing area of the page.

The default shapes and lines used by the chart for quick composition are determined by the "current style" in favorites in the toolbar, and you can select them by tapping the graphics and line tools separately, and then expanding the Favorites list.

Formatting a Composition Object

When the composition object is quickly added, the next task is to adjust the layout and position of the object, and to complete the connection between the objects.

The list of objects in the contents panel and the approximate objects can be intuitively selected from one to many objects, and they can be modified in batches, such as aligning lines, arranging spacing and aligning, and finally modifying the shape of individual objects.

To change the shape of the steps in the end may be different from the usual habits of many people, why not just drag a shape from the "mold" to the editing area, and then connect the line? Unless it is a one-time drag from the mold panel containing layout and lines of multiple objects to the canvas, one of the added efficiency is lower, and as mentioned earlier, this way will lead to the incoherent thinking. After the process sketch has been completed, the shape of the individual objects can be modified to "icing on the cake" flavor.

Modifying a flowchart already has an object there is a trick question, do not use the substitution method, should be modified with the format brush:

• Open the "Mold" panel and find the right mold;
• Select the specific shape in the stencil preview;
• Press and hold the style tray's first style icon and drag it directly onto the object that you want to modify in the edit area.

When you use an object in a stencil to format a Page object, you can double-click the stencil panel icon to lock the stencil panel so that when you click another Page object, the inspector remains in the stencil panel.

Guide lines, guides, and grids

When moving objects near other objects in OmniGraffle, blue alignment and dimension guides are automatically displayed, and a Red center alignment guide appears when the selected object is moved to the center of the page.

As with most drawing software, if you enable ruler on the View menu, you can pull a vertical or horizontal guide by pressing and dragging on the ruler to the page. However, the lack of precision in this way, OmniGraffle 6 provides another reference line of the setup mode, and as part of the layout, press and hold the layout of the Guide icon drag, all the guides on the page can be copied directly to other pages. To delete a guide, you can drag the guide to the ruler in the edit area, or you can delete it using the "delete" key after you select it in the layout's Reference line edit panel.

Guides are primarily used to calibrate areas, provide alignment datums for objects, and if they are not automatically aligned to guides, check that smart alignment guides and smart distance guides are checked in the guides item in the Arrange menu.

Guides, alignment, and grid settings

Grid is another way to assist in the layout of the page global mode, after opening the network display, tick "Snap to grid" moving objects or drawing objects automatically close to the grid line, so that the alignment and regular layout. When you fine-tune the position of an object, sometimes snap to grid and snap to Grid can be a drag that interferes with your actions, you may choose to turn off grid alignment in the layout Settings panel, or hold down the SHIFT key and nudge the position of the object with the up or down key.

When snapping between multiple objects is generally selected, align with align in the object Settings panel, it is important to note that the first selected object automatically becomes the alignment datum for subsequent selection objects . If the Alignment datum is the page itself, tick "layout alignment".

In addition to layout and alignment using guides, guides, grids, and alignments, there is a primitive but precise way to---coordinate values. For example, multiple overlapping objects, through the catalog panel can solve the problem of choice, the precise location of the problem can be assigned to the "geometry" coordinate values to complete.

Component or footage

The purpose of the mold is to "reuse" sharing and improve efficiency, in use can be both the source of material, or the source of the program components, for the flowchart and organization Chart of a class of drawings, the component of the model can quickly complete the drawing of the entire structure.

Mold file is only a special form of OmniGraffle file, in the face of repetition, a large number of flowchart drawing work, we can be expected to re-use of the flowchart or the local separately saved as a mold file. When you draw a new flowchart, the circle containing the connected objects in the stencil panel are dragged directly onto the page, and then you can subtract and subtract, and the appropriate changes to the text label will be completed quickly.

In the re-use of the mold, do not just think of the mold as a collection of scattered materials such as icons and shapes, you can create your own component patterns according to your own work needs, mold files.

A purposeful collection and collation of tooling documents is a long-term and needs to be kept up to date. OmniGraffle 6 in the management of the mold is much clearer than the old version, the new file in the navigation window can see the mold and template separate classification, you can create a new mold or edit the existing mold.

New and edited molds

For the existing mold file modification, mainly to translate the text label, delete the objects that are not used, and then according to their own frequency of use to adjust the placement of objects and so on. If necessary, you can also consolidate common objects in multiple stencil files into a single stencil file.

For the team, before drawing the mold file can go to the OmniGraffle official Graffletopia search and query, the official website of the mold is a member and charge mode, but high quality, wide coverage, and a lot of the mold contains not only good legend material, Also contains the other party's working mode, can learn from and reference.

Individual mold footage can be collected from sites such as Stencils.io, Dribbble, and Iconfinder. Conditional can also be used to create their own Sketch software (exported to PDF can be used in the OmniGraffle).

When you save a stencil file for Visio as Visio 2003-2010 (. vss), you can open it in OmniGraffle and import it, and the VSD file for Visio OmniGraffle can also be opened, but there are compatibility issues with many details, such as labels and fonts. That's disastrous for fine-grained plotting, so using Visio's stencil files is okay, as is the case with Visio's compatibility with the MAC, or the virtual machine approach.

"Reprint" OmniGraffle (ii) basic drawing and tooling