Command	Entity Types
URL (not on graphs)	edge/line, node/shape
arrowhead	edge/line
arrowtail	edge/line
color	edge/line, node/shape
dir	edge/line
fillcolor	node/shape
fixedsize	node/shape
fontcolor	edge/line, node/shape
fontname	edge/line, node/shape
fontsize	edge/line, node/shape
headlabel	edge/line
label	edge/line, node/shape
labelfontcolor	edge/line
labelfontname	edge/line
labelfontsize	edge/line
orientation	node/shape
rank	node/shape
rankdir	graph/page
shape	node/shape
style	edge/line, node/shape
taillabel	edge/line
width	node/shape

All arrowhead types are supported, but a few do not correspond exactly to OmniGraffle arrow types. The inv, invdot, invodot, and invempty arrow types are replaced with the closest available OmniGraffle line ending.

The sidebar on the left makes it easy for you to find Templates and Stencils to use in your next project. At the very top, we’ve included a Recents section, which remembers the Diagrams, Templates, and Stencils you’ve used or created recently. When you select an item, the sidebar on the right displays all kinds of details about the file you’ve selected, including its name, size, the units of measurement, and whether auto-layout and snap to grid are enabled.

Use the Action menu (the little gear ) to open or create new files, templates, and stencils, reveal where a particular resource lives on your Mac in the Finder, move an object to Trash, or set a particular template that you’re fond of as the default. If you have used OmniGraffle in the past, you can use the Restore option in the Action menu to restore older templates and stencils on your Mac so they work with OmniGraffle 6.

The Resource Browser also has a Help button (), which you can click to access the very same Help documentation you’re reading right now.

Before you dive right in, though, take some time to learn some of the basics of drawing in OmniGraffle. There are many tips and tricks here that can help you master OmniGraffle in no time.

With the Shape tool selected, drag across the canvas until you have a shape that is the size you want. It doesn’t have to be perfect right now; to set an exact size, use the Geometry object inspector (Command–1).

When you draw a shape, the mouse pointer changes to a set of crosshairs. The shape you draw takes on the Current Style in the Style Well. The default is a white-filled box with a simple black stroke. Click and drag to draw the shape; as you do, you’ll see a little box appear that gives you the dimensions of the object you’re drawing. Hold down the Shift key while drawing to restrain the dimensions of the shape to get that perfect square or circle you’ve been striving for.

Once you have selected an object, you can modify it with the Inspectors or use the menu commands to alter its appearance.

• To resize an object, first select the object and then drag one of its resizing handles until the object is the size you’d like.

• To select or deselect more objects without losing the selection you’ve already made, hold Command as you click other objects.

• To select several adjacent objects at once, click in an empty area of the canvas and drag a box around the objects that you want to select. If you hold down the Option key while dragging, you’ll get only the objects that fit completely inside the selection rectangle.

• To rotate an object, hold down the Command key while mousing over one of the eight handles. The pointer changes from a standard resizing control to a curved one. An angle control appears inside of the object, along with a helper dialog that shows the degree of the angle.

• To quickly create a copy of an object you’ve drawn, hold down the Option key and then click on and drag the object you would like to copy. An exact duplicate appears on the canvas; this method is much faster than using Copy and Paste from the Edit menu or their respective keyboard shortcuts.

• To move an object, use the Selection tool to click and hold on the object, and then drag it to its new location. Smart Guides (the light blue lines) appear to help you align objects to one another.

• To group several objects together so they can be moved or styled as a single unit, select all of the objects and choose Arrange ▸ Group (Shift-Command-G).

  

  A group behaves like a single object; you can select it, move it around, resize it, use inspectors to change its style and properties, connect lines to it, and so on. Any objects can be grouped, even groups.

  Click once to select the group as a whole, then click again to select an individual member of the group. You can keep clicking to select members of groups within groups.

  To take a group apart, select it and choose Arrange ▸ Ungroup (Shift-Command-U).

1. Select the Line tool. (Note, this tool might look different if you change its style.)

   

2. Click the first object you would like to connect; this object becomes the source of the line.

   

3. Click the second object you would like to connect; this object becomes the destination of the line.

   

4. When the objects are connected with a line, they stay connected no matter how much you change or move them around. That means the logical integrity of your diagram is preserved regardless of how you choose to style the objects.

   

5. You can disconnect a line from an object by selecting the line and then dragging one of its end points. To delete the line, just select the line and hit Delete.

   

   

For example, let’s say that you want to change the Fill color inside of that boring white object you’ve just created:

1. Select the object on the canvas.

   

2. Select the Object Inspector (Command–1) in the right sidebar.

   

3. The Fill inspector has two controls: Fill type on the left, and Fill color on the right. For now, let’s leave the Fill type alone, and just select a color to fill the inside of the object.

   Clicking the arrows on the side of the Fill color control pops up a list of some preset colors which you can choose from. However, if you click the little square next to the little arrows, the color well pops open.

   

4. Use the Colors panel to choose a new fill color for the object.

   

5. Your object has a new fill color! Yeah!

   

1. The toolbar provides easy access to the controls of your choosing. Choose View ▸ Customize Toolbar (or Control-click) on the toolbar to arrange your favorite tools. Most importantly, the toolbar is home to the Tool Palette which you’ll use to create diagrams and such. To hide or show the toolbar, choose View ▸ Hide Toolbar or View ▸ Show Toolbar, respectively.
2. The sidebar combines the Canvases and Outline sidebars from OmniGraffle 5 into a single sidebar with Canvases at the top and the Contents viewer below. You can resize these panes to suit your needs, and the benefit for you is more space within the Canvas so you can focus on your work.
3. In the middle of the interface is the Canvas, which is where you do all of your drawing. You can use the drawing tools to create shapes, connect them with lines, drag and group objects, create tables, and do way more stuff than we can mention here in this quick list of features.
4. Just above the Canvas is the Inspector Bar, which reveals all kinds of details about an object you’ve selected on the Canvas.
5. One of the more notable changes for OmniGraffle 6 is the absence of the floating inspector palettes. Tired of searching for the Stencils Library or wondering where you put that Type inspector? We’ve combined the Inspectors and the Stencil Library into an ultra-handy Inspectors sidebar to the right of the canvas.
6. Beneath the Inspector sidebar at the lower-right, you’ll find the Style Tray. Much like the Inspector Bar, the Style Tray gives you a graphical representation of all of the styles you’ve applied to an object you’ve selected on the Canvas. To the left of the Style Tray, you’ll see a Style Chit which combines all of the styles for the selected object. You can drag and drop a Style Chit on other objects to quickly apply a batch of styles in your project.

This self-contained approach to the interface makes it even easier for you to jump to Full Screen mode without having to later gather all of your windows and reorient yourself. One window. One vision. One OmniGraffle.

Now that you have a better understanding of how OmniGraffle is organized visually, let’s dive in deeper and look at everything OmniGraffle has to offer. If you haven’t launched OmniGraffle yet, now might be a good time to do that.

About OmniGraffle

Find out about the particular version of OmniGraffle you are using.

Check for Updates

Normally, OmniGraffle checks for updated versions of itself regularly based on the Update preferences. Use this command to check once right now. If there is an updated version of the software, you are prompted to download it.

Preferences (Command-,)

Open OmniGraffle’s preferences window; you can use it to customize the application’s behavior to your liking.

Licenses

Show the Licenses dialog, where you can review your OmniGraffle software licenses. For more information about how licenses work, check Licensing section.

Services

The Services menu is a collection of system-wide services offered by other apps on your Mac. OmniGraffle plays rather well with OS X, so you should be able to use your standard services from within the application.

Hide OmniGraffle (Command-H)

Leave OmniGraffle open, but temporarily put away its windows while you work in another application.

Hide Others (Option-Command-H)

Hide all windows of other applications you have open, so that you can concentrate on OmniGraffle.

Show All

Show all of the windows in all applications you’ve hidden using the Hide commands.

Quit OmniGraffle (Command-Q)

Choose this if you really must part with OmniGraffle for now. If you have unsaved documents open, you are prompted to save or discard your changes.

New (Command-N)

If you have a default template, this creates a new document based on it. If you don’t have a default template, this opens the template chooser.

New Resource

Create a new OmniGraffle stencil, template, or diagram style, starting from the template of your choice.

Resource Browser (Shift-Command-N)

Open the new Resource Browser, where you can pick which template you’d like to use for a new document.

Open (Command-O)

Browse for a document to open. You can open any OmniGraffle document, or a file in one of the formats OmniGraffle knows how to import.

Open Recent

Open a document you’ve recently worked on. Choose Clear Menu to remove the list of recent documents, so no one knows you’ve been working on Surprise Party Invitation.graffle.

Close (Command-W)

Close the frontmost window you have open. If you have unsaved changes, you are prompted to save or discard them.

Save (Command-S)

Write all of your hard work in the frontmost document onto the disk for safekeeping. If you have already saved the document once, the new version replaces the old one. If it’s the first time you’re saving this document, you are prompted to browse to a location on the disk and enter a file name.

Duplicate (Shift-Command-S)

Make a duplicate copy of the current document. The duplicated file uses the same filename as the file you’re working on, but tacks on copy to the filename so you know which one is the clone.

Rename

Whether you have used File ▸ Duplicate (Shift-Command-S) to make a copy of a file, or if you’ve decided that you don’t like the filename you’ve given to your current project, select this menu item to rename the current file.

Move To

Move the file to another location on your Mac’s hard drive.

Move to Trash

Be careful with this one; it moves the file you are currently working on into the Trash. This comes in particularly handy when you’re working on multiple duplicated files as you tweak and compare styles. With the dupes you don’t want, just choose File ▸ Move to Trash and then close the window (Command-W).

Revert To

When revisions don’t really work out like you had planned, choose this to go back to the version of the file that’s on the disk; it’s kind of like a mass-Undo. If you open a file that had some changes in an automatic backup, you can choose this command to go back to the last explicitly saved version.

Place Image

Browse for an image file; a shape containing the image is created on the canvas at the last place you clicked with the Selection tool.

Export (Option-Command-E)

This creates a new file, in a file type of your choice, from some portion of the data in your OmniGraffle document. Exported files are approximations of the OmniGraffle document in a different format, not perfect replicas. Check the exporting section for more information.

Page Setup (Shift-Command-P)

Show the standard OS X Page Setup sheet. This sheet contains several panes of settings for how to represent your document on pages.

Print (Command-P)

Show the standard OS X Print sheet. In addition to the settings in Page Setup, you have a lot of printing-specific options you can set here.

Print Canvas(es)

Show the Print sheet, but only include the selected canvases.

Undo (Command-Z)

OmniGraffle remembers a list of changes you make to a document. Choose this command to move one step backwards in the list, as if you hadn’t done the last thing in the list. Keep choosing it to keep stepping backwards in time.

Redo (Shift-Command-Z)

If the last thing you did was to Undo something, you can step forward and do it again, effectively Undoing the Undo.

Cut (Command-X)

Remove the current selection and put it on the clipboard, so you can paste it somewhere else.

Copy (Command-C)

Copy the current selection to the clipboard.

Copy As

PDF

Put a PDF copy of the current selection on the clipboard for pasting into any app that accepts PDF files for viewing, editing, or sending. If the app you paste into also supports LinkBack (this includes OmniGraffle itself), you can even go back and edit the pasted content in OmniGraffle.

PNG

Put a PNG copy of the current selection on the clipboard for pasting into any app that accepts PNG image files.

TIFF

Put a TIFF copy of the current selection on the clipboard for pasting into any app that accepts TIFF image files.

AppleScript (Pro)

Put an AppleScript representation of the selected objects on the clipboard. You can paste the result into AppleScript Editor (/Applications/Utilities) or into the Action inspector of another object to make a script that recreates the objects. The output is also useful just for studying how OmniGraffle’s AppleScript support works.

Paste (Command-V)

Place the contents of the clipboard on the canvas, at the last place you clicked with the Selection tool. (Or insert text from the clipboard if you are editing an object’s text.) If there is an image or some text in the clipboard, a new shape object containing the image or text is created.

Paste in Place (Shift-Command-V)

If you copy an item on your canvas with Command-C and then use Paste in Place (Shift-Command-V), you will paste in the contents of the clipboard directly on top of the item you copied. This is particularly helpful when you want to copy an item on one layer and then paste in another copy on another layer that’s higher up in the stack.

Paste and Match Style (Option-Shift-Command-V)

When you are editing text, you can use this command to paste in some text without bringing along the style it had in the application you copied it from. Instead, it matches the style of the text you already have, as if you had typed it there yourself.

Duplicate Selection (Command-D)

Make a copy of the current selection and place it on the canvas, without using the clipboard. This command has a special feature:

• Select something on the canvas and Duplicate it.
• Use the Selection tool to move the copy; OmniGraffle learns the distance and direction of the copy in relation to the original.
• Duplicate again as many times as you like; each new copy is the same distance and direction from the previous copy.

Delete

Obliterate the current selection, forever banishing it from this plane of existence (unless you Undo).

Select All (Command-A)

Select everything selectable on the canvas. Remember that objects on locked layers can’t be selected. If you are editing the text of an object, this instead selects all of the object’s text.

Select

This menu offers you different options for selecting objects, either based on their style, how they’re connected, and based on their relationships:

Similar Objects

Select all of the objects on the canvas that have the same style attributes as the currently selected objects.

Connected Objects

Select all shapes that are directly or indirectly connected by lines to the currently selected objects, and all of the lines between.

Ancestor

Select all of the ancestors of the currently selected objects, based on the hierarchy established by connection lines.

Descendants

Select all of the descendants of the currently selected objects, based on the hierarchy established by connection lines.

Outlining

These commands are only available when you are working in the Outline Editor (Option-Command–3):

• Add Child (Command-})
• Add Sibling (Option-Command-’)
• Add Aunt (Command-{)
• Add Parent (Option-Command-;)
• Add Spouse (Option-Command-/)
• Indent
• Outdent

Canvases

New Canvas (Option-Command-N)

Add a new canvas to the document.

Duplicate Canvas

Add a new canvas, identical to the current canvas, to the document.

Delete Canvas

Get rid of the current canvas completely.

Layers

New Layer

Add a new layer to the current canvas.

New Shared Layer

Add a new shared layer to the current canvas.

Duplicate Layer

Add a new layer, identical to the selected layer, to the canvas.

Merge Layer Down

Move everything on the selected layer to the next layer down, then delete the selected layer.

Delete Layer

Get rid of the current layer completely. You can’t delete the last layer in a canvas.

Delete All Copies

This command is only available when you select a shared layer. It deletes all instances of the shared layer on any canvas throughout the document.

Layer Settings

Visible

shows or hides objects on the layer

Printable

controls whether objects on the layer should be included when printing

Unlocked

controls whether objects on the layer can be selected or edited

Shared Layer

specifies a layer that can be shared with other layers

Select All in Layer

Select all of the objects on the selected layer.

Move Selection to Layer

Move all selected objects to the selected layer.

Magnets

Copy Magnets

Put the magnet arrangement of the selected object onto the clipboard, so that you can paste them to a different object.

Paste Magnets

If there is a magnet arrangement on the clipboard, apply it to the selected object. Any existing magnets are replaced by the new ones.

Delete Magnets

Get rid of all the magnets on the selected objects.

Positions

In addition to these options, magnet positions can also be set in the Connections properties inspector (Command–3) in the Other Connections tab:

• No Magnets
• Cardinal Points:
  • 4 Magnets: N, S, E, W
  • 2 Magnets: N, S
  • 2 Magnets: E, W
  • 4 Magnets: NE, NW, SE, SW
  • 8 Magnets
• Per Segment:
  • On Each Vertex
  • 1 Magnet Per Side
  • 2 Magnets Per Side
  • 3 Magnets Per Side
  • 4 Magnets Per Side
  • 5 Magnets Per Side

Find

Find (Command-F)

This summons OmniGraffle’s Find panel. You can search for a specific string of text, or you can use a regular expression to match a whole class of strings. When searching for a specific string, select Ignore Case to match letters regardless of whether they are uppercase or lowercase; select Whole Word to avoid matching portions of a word. If you use groups in a regular expression, you might want to select (or replace) the whole expression, or just one of the groups; use the pop-up menu to indicate which.

Find Next (Command-G)

Choose this to find the next occurrence of the text you last entered in the Find panel, as if you had just clicked its Next button.

Find Previous (Shift-Command-D)

Choose this to find the previous occurrence of the string you last entered in the Find panel, as if you had just clicked its Previous button.

Enter Selection (Command-E)

Select some text in an object, then choose this command to put the selected text into the Find panel, replacing whatever was there before. Then you can use the Find Next and Find Previous commands to search for other occurrences of the text.

Scroll to Selection (Command-J)

Move the view so that the selected objects are visible.

Spelling and Grammar

Show Spelling and Grammar (Command-:)

Opens the Spelling and Grammar dialog. Since the colon (:) is on the upper part of semicolon (;) key, you will also need to use the Shift key to option this dialog (Shift-Command-;).

Check Document Now (Command-;)

Checks the spelling in your current document and stops at the first misspelled word it finds.

Check Spelling While Typing

This option is enabled by default, but can be turned off by selecting this option in the menu.

Check Grammar With Spelling

This option also checks your grammar as it checks spelling. This option comes in particularly handy when you’re entering a lot of text.

Mask Image/End Masking

Resize or rotate an image object on the canvas. Hold Shift to scale the image, and hold Command while hovering over one of the image handles to rotate an image. Holding Shift-Command lets you rotate the image in 15 degree increments. Press Return, or choose Edit ▸ End Masking when finished to accept any masking changes you’ve made to the image.

Insert Variable

While you are editing a shape object’s text, choose one of these commands to insert a special tag. When you finish editing the text, the tag changes to represent some aspect of the object itself, the canvas, the page, or the document. If the data that the tag refers to changes, the tag automatically updates itself. Some variables, such as Page Number, are useful for putting on a shared layer and then sharing that layer with every canvas.

If you are using one of the date variables, you can customize the format of the date using Cocoa’s date formatting tokens. For example, to get a date such as “2013 - 10 - 05 08:37”, you could type this:

<%date %Y - %m - %d %H:%M %>

Canvas Name

the name of the canvas the object inhabits.

Layer Name

the name of the layer.

Document Name

the name of the document the object inhabits.

Current Date

just what it says; this option inserts the current date. This particularly handy when you want to “stamp” a document you’re printing with today’s date.

Document Creation Date

the date that the document was originally created, according to OS X’s filesystem.

Document Modification Date

the date that the document was last saved, according to OS X’s filesystem.

Creator

the name of the user who created the file, according to OS X’s filesystem.

Modifier

the name of the user who last saved the file, according to OS X’s filesystem.

Page Number

the number of the page that the object inhabits, based on settings in the Canvas Size inspector and the Page Setup panel.

Total Pages

the number of pages in the whole document. Use this with the Page Number tag to get results like “Page 2 of 5”.

Canvas Number

if you have multiple canvases in your project, you can reference them by number.

X Position

the object’s horizontal distance from the origin, just like in the Geometry inspector.

Y Position

the object’s vertical distance from the origin, just like in the Geometry inspector.

Width

the object’s horizontal size, just like in the Geometry inspector.

Height

the object’s vertical size, just like in the Geometry inspector.

Line Length

This tag is somewhat unique. If the shape containing the tag is a line label, it shows the line’s length. It’s not useful if the shape object is not attached to a line.

Edit in LinkBack App

If you have pasted LinkBack content from another app, select the object and use this command to open the content in the original app.

Start Dictation (fn-fn)

Press the fn key twice to start dictation.

Special Characters (Option-Command-T)

Summon the standard OS X Character Palette.

Zoom

These menu options let you zoom in and out on the canvas, and are helpful for when you need fine-grained control over where objects are placed:

Zoom In (Command->)

Move up to the next closest zoom level, making the canvas appear larger.

Zoom Out (Command-<)

Move down to the next farthest zoom level, making the canvas appear smaller.

Zoom to Actual Size (Option-Command–0)

Move to 100 percent zoom, so that the canvas appears as large as it actually is according to the canvas units.

Zoom to Selection (Option-Command-J)

Zoom to a level and position that fills the view with the currently selected objects.

Previous Zoom

Return to the previous zoom level you had before the current one.

Fit in Window

Zoom to a level and position that keep every object on the canvas visible as you work.

Extras

There are several things on the canvas (other than the objects themselves) that you might want to see; choose something from this list to show or hide it.

Actions

Any object with an action assigned to it in the Action inspector gets an action tag near its upper-right corner.

Grid Lines (Command-\)

This is the grid as defined in the Grid inspector. Note that you can snap to the grid whether it’s visible or not.

Guide Lines

These are the manual guides that you set up for aligning objects on the canvas.

Magnets

Choose this to see all objects’ magnets, all the time.

Notes

Any object with a note in the Note inspector gets a note tag near its upper-right corner.

Origin

This is the crosshair that represents the canvas origin.

Page Breaks

These are the lines that represent borders between pages.

Rulers (Command-R)

The rulers help you size objects on the canvas, and include an inspector bar for common object editing.

Show/Hide Sidebar (Option-Command–1)

Toggle the visibility of the left sidebar which contains Canvases and Contents.

Show Contents

Use these options to toggle between:

List View (Option-Command–2)

This option provides you with a detailed list of every single item in your diagram, from boxes to lines to text labels and images—everything in your project is listed here.

Outline Editor (Option-Command–3)

The Outline Editor makes it easy for you to quickly enter—and edit—objects in a project. This provides you with a hierarchical view of the objects in your project so you can quickly assess their relationships.

Selection Matrix (Option-Command–4)

This option groups similarly-styled objects—blocks, labels, lines, images, you name it!—together so you can quickly select objects based on their style.

Show/Hide Inspectors (Command-I)

Toggles the Inspectors sidebar to the right of the Canvas.

Show Inspector

Menu options for quick access to the Inspectors and the Stencils Library:

Object (Command–1)

opens the Object inspector

Type (Command–2)

opens the Type inspector

Properties (Command–3)

opens the Properties inspector

Canvas (Command–4)

opens the Canvas inspector

Document (Command–5)

opens the Document inspector

Stencils (Command–6)

opens the Stencils Library

Display Canvas

These options make it easy for you to switch between the different canvases in your project:

Next Canvas (Command-])

Switch to the canvas after the one you are currently editing.

Previous Canvas (Command-[)

Switch to the canvas before the one you are currently editing.

Customize Toolbar

Conjure up a sheet of controls that you can drag to your toolbar, as in other Mac apps.

Show/Hide Toolbar

Set the visibility of the document window’s toolbar.

Enter/Exit Full Screen (Control-Command-F)

Enter full screen mode.

Show Fonts (Command-T)

Opens the standard Font panel.

Show Colors (Shift-Command-C)

Opens the standard Color panel.

Font

Use this submenu to set a font and style to the selected text.

Bold (Command-B)

Make the selected text bold.

Italic (Command-I)

Make the selected text italic.

Underline (Command-U)

Underline the selected text.

Outline

Places an outline around the selected text.

Bigger (Command-+)

Make the selected text bigger.

Smaller (Command-–)

Make the selected text smaller.

Kern

Change the spacing between characters; options include:

• Use Default
• Use None
• Tighten
• Loosen

Ligature

Change the spacing between lines; options include:

• Use Default
• Use None
• Use All

Baseline

Alter the text’s baseline; options include:

• Use Default
• Superscript
• Subscript
• Raise
• Lower

Text

These options give you control over the selected text’s properties, including:

• Align Left (Control-Command-{)
• Center (Control-Command-|)
• Justify
• Align Right (Control-Command-})
• Align Top (Option-Command-{)
• Center Vertically (Option-Command-|)
• Align Bottom (Option-Command-{)
• Center Horizontally & Vertically
• Allow Hyphenation

Most of the functionality here is also available in the Type inspector (Command–2).

Copy Object Style (Control-Command-C)

Put the styles of the selected object on the clipboard, where they can be pasted onto other objects.

Paste Object Style (Control-Command-V)

If there are object styles on the clipboard, apply them to the selected objects.

Choose Diagram Style

Opens the diagram style chooser for applying a consistent style to all objects on the canvas.

Reapply Diagram Style

Applies the current diagram style again, to catch any differently-styled objects that might have shown up since the last time it was applied.

Restyle Selected Objects

Reapplies the current diagram style to just the selected objects.

Bring to Front (Shift-Command-F)
Bring Forward (Option-Command-F)

Objects on the same layer have an order to them: newly created objects appear in front of objects that already existed. Choose Bring to Front to move the selected objects in front of all other objects on the layer. Hold Option to change this command to Bring Forward, which moves the selected objects forward one step in the ordering.

Send to Back (Shift-Command-B)
Send Backward (Option-Command-B)

Similar to Bring to Front, except it moves the selected objects behind all other objects on the layer. Hold Option to change this command to Send Backward, which moves the selected objects backward one step in the ordering.

Lock (Command-L)

Lock the selected objects. A locked object can’t be moved or edited. When you try to select a locked object, it shows X marks instead of selection handles. Basically, the only thing you can do with a locked object is unlock it; the exception is that you can change an object’s label and hierarchical position in the outline view. Locking is useful for making sure you don’t accidentally change something you have set up just right.

Unlock (Option-Command-L)

Unlock the selected objects so that they can be moved or edited.

Group (Shift-Command-G)

Use this command with at least two objects selected to turn them into a group, making them behave like a single object.

Ungroup (Shift-Command-U)

Use this command with a group selected to separate it back into its component objects.

Guides

OmniGraffle offers Smart Guides and manual guides. Smart guides are little blue lines that appear as you move, resize, or rotate objects, to help you keep things aligned and spaced evenly.

Manual guides are canvas-spanning magenta lines that you place yourself; you can make as many as you like, use them to align objects, and show or hide them from the View menu.

Enable/Disable Smart Alignment Guides

These are the Smart Guides that appear to help you line up objects’ edges or centers. They also help you match objects’ rotation when you Command-drag an object’s selection handles.

Enable/Disable Smart Distance Guides

These are the Smart Guides that help you space out objects evenly.

Lock/Unlock Guides

As long as the manual guides are locked, you won’t be able to move them.

New Horizontal/Vertical Guide

This puts a guide across the canvas; if the guides are not locked you can use the Selection tool to drag it into position wherever you like. As you drag an object near a guide, its edges or center snap into place along the guide. You can also drag new guides out from the vertical and horizontal rulers.

Clear Manual Guides

Remove all of the manual guides from the canvas. If you just want to temporarily hide them, you can do so from the View menu.

Align

These commands replicate the functionality of buttons in the Alignment object inspector (Command–1), lining up objects’ edges and centers, or spacing objects out evenly. Options include:

• Align Left Edges
• Align Right Edges
• Align Top Edges
• Align Bottom Edges
• Align Vertical Centers
• Align Horizontal Centers
• Make Centered Row
• Make Centered Column

Grid

Snap to Grid and Align Objects to Grid work just like they do on the Grid inspector; Size Objects to Grid resizes objects to make their edges follow the nearest grid lines. Options include:

• Snap to Grid (Option-Command-\)
• Align Objects to Grid (Option-Command-[)

Diagram Layout

These commands lay out objects, either all objects on the canvas or the selected objects, according to the settings in the Diagram Layout inspector. Options include:

• Lay Out Entire Canvas
• Lay Out Selection

Size

If you have objects of different sizes on the canvas, but would like them to be the same size, first select the object that has the dimensions you'd like the others to emulate, choose Arrange ▸ Size, and then choose one of the resizing options:

• Make Same Width
• Make Same Height
• Make Same Size
• Make Natural Size
• Size to Fit Image

Make Natural Size makes an object’s height and width equal. For objects with an image placed in the Image inspector, Size to Fit Image makes the object just big enough to show the whole image at its original size.

Minimize (Command-M)

Shrink the frontmost window into the Dock.

Zoom

Size the window to fit its contents, or return to the previous window size.

New Window on Document

You can look at the same document in several different windows; Zoom and scroll each window however you like.

Bring All to Front

Put all of OmniGraffle’s windows in front of all other app windows.

OmniGraffle Help

This summons the onscreen help you’re reading right now. Howdy! Thanks for being the kind of person who reads the documentation.

Getting Started

This opens OmniGraffle 6’s Welcome document. This document—created in OmniGraffle 6!—highlights the new features of OmniGraffle 6.

Keyboard Shortcuts

See a document that lists all of the keyboard shortcuts available in OmniGraffle 6, so that you can eschew that mouse thingy.

What’s New in 6

This command opens the Help file, What's New in OmniGraffle, which explains all of the new features in OmniGraffle 6 along with the life-affirming benefits of upgrading to OmniGraffle Professional 6.

Release Notes

This pops open a window that includes lots of information from our engineering team about the things they’ve fixed, updated, or have added to OmniGraffle. This document changes whenever we issue an update of OmniGraffle, so be sure to read this after updating to the latest and greatest build to see what’s changed.

Send Feedback

Choose this to start an email message to the OmniGraffle support folks. This is the best way to get in touch with us; your version number and license information are automatically entered in the subject field, which helps us help you help yourself. Or something.

Reference

The available file formats are:

• BMP bitmap image — A legacy graphics format.

• EPS vector image — Encapsulated PostScript. This is a common format in professional printing.

• GIF bitmap image — A legacy graphics format prevalent on the web.

• HTML Image Map — A hypertext file and a JPEG, PNG, or GIF image. URL actions in the original OmniGraffle document are coded into the image map as links so that the image can be clicked to follow them. (Note that actions on lines aren’t included, but actions on line labels are)

• JPEG bitmap image — a popular compressed image format. You can lower the image quality to get a smaller file size.

• OmniGraffle Stencil, OmniGraffle Template — Resources for OmniGraffle.

• OmniOutliner 3 — Represent the diagram as a text outline, using the connection lines between shapes to create a hierarchy. This doesn’t work as well for diagrams that don’t have strictly tree-like structures.

• PDF vector image — Portable Document Format. This is a nice cross-platform format that has good support for both vector components and bitmaps.

• PNG bitmap image — Portable Network Graphics, a popular format for the Web. This format uses lossless compression to retain the details of an image while decreasing its file size. It supports transparency.

• TIFF bitmap image — Tagged Image File Format. This format supports transparency.

Depending on the file format you choose, you have different options. Most offer an Export Area option, with which you can choose how much of the document to export.

• Current Selection — Only export the objects that are selected right now.

• All Objects — Export all of the objects on the canvas, but not the empty areas.

• Region — Specify a precise region of the canvas to export.

• Current Canvas — Export the entire canvas.

• Whole Document — Export everything, creating one image file for each canvas.

Depending on the format you choose, you can also choose a scale for exporting smaller or larger than actual size, the resolution, the compression level, and whether to make the background transparent.

DOT files (.dot)

• OmniGraffle understands a subset of the DOT language used by Graphviz. This isn’t a full implementation of DOT, but it can be quite useful.

Diagram! 2 documents (.diagram2 and .dpalette2)

• Diagram is a NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP application similar to OmniGraffle. OmniGraffle can import the objects in a Diagram file, but not attached EPS images, sounds, or links.

OmniOutliner documents (.ooutline and .oo3)

• When you open an OmniOutliner file, the items of the outline are interpreted as a diagram. A dialog appears; use it to indicate exactly how to interpret the outline:

• Use the pop-up list to choose a diagram style.

EOModeler files (.eomodeld)

• OmniGraffle creates a diagram of the database relationships described by the file.

Folder structures

• Drag a folder from the Finder and drop it on OmniGraffle’s application icon to map out the folder’s contents as a diagram.

For lots of information about LinkBack, and a list of applications that support it, check the website at www.linkbackproject.org.

To embed OmniGraffle content in another LinkBack application, just copy and paste the content like you would normally. The same goes for embedding other applications’ content in OmniGraffle diagrams.

To embed OmniGraffle content inside a single object in OmniGraffle, select all of the objects on your canvas (Command-A), choose Edit ▸ Copy As ▸ PDF from the menu bar, and then Paste (Command-V). The objects you copied become a single image; double-clicking the object opens a new OmniGraffle window in which you can edit the objects to your heart’s content.

To edit OmniGraffle content embedded in another application:

• Double-click the OmniGraffle content in the other application’s document; an OmniGraffle window appears containing the content.

• Edit the content in the OmniGraffle window, just as you normally would.

• In OmniGraffle, choose File ▸ Save; the content in the other application updates automatically.

• To edit other LinkBack applications’ content embedded in an OmniGraffle diagram, just double-click it. When you save in the other application, the content in the OmniGraffle diagram updates.

1. From the menu bar, choose OmniGraffle ▸ Licenses to open the Licenses window.
2. Click Add License. A sheet slides down from the License window’s titlebar.
3. Switch to Mail (or some other email client you may be using) and find the email message that contains the license key for OmniGraffle 6.

   Tip
   You can quickly switch between apps on your Mac using OS X’s built-in app switcher: Command-Tab. To keep the app switcher open, hold down the Command key after pressing Tab.

   When you press Command-Tab, the app switcher pops up onscreen as a row of icons for the apps currently running on your Mac. Continue pressing Command-Tab until you find the app you need—in this case, Mail—and then let go of the Command key. You can also use Shift-Command-Tab to go backwards in the list of running apps, or you can use the Left Arrow or Right Arrow keys to go backwards or forwards, respectively.

4. In the email message, you’ll need to locate the name used for the License Owner, and the License Key. Select the name next to License Owner, and choose Edit ▸ Copy (or use Command-C) to copy the name to the pasteboard.

   Note
   If you can’t copy and paste the information, you’ll have to type it in. Make sure you enter everything exactly as it appears in your license message, including the dashes.

5. Press Command-Tab to switch from Mail back to OmniGraffle.
6. In the Owner field, choose Edit ▸ Paste (or press Command-V) to paste the name you used to register OmniGraffle.
7. Press Command-Tab to switch from OmniGraffle to Mail.
8. In the email message from us, select the License Key, and choose Edit ▸ Copy (or use Command-C) to copy the name to the pasteboard.
9. Press Command-Tab to switch from Mail to OmniGraffle.
10. Click in the License Key field, and choose Edit ▸ Paste (or use Command-V).

11. The Type drop-down menu is grayed out by default, which limits the license type to Personal for the current user account on your Mac. However, your license key can also be used for another Type, Computer:

    • Personal: This type is for your personal use, and will only be available on this computer when you are logged in as the user who installed OmniGraffle. You can install this license on more than one computer, but only for your personal use. You should not use the software on two different computers at the same time with this kind of license. If a Personal license is available, the application will always use it.

    • Computer: You can configure your Mac to use this type, which permits any other user account on your Mac to use OmniGraffle. See Configuring OmniGraffle to Support the Computer License for details on how to do this.

12. Click Save.

After clicking Save, the license key is verified, after which you’ll need to restart OmniGraffle to unlock any Pro features, if you’ve purchased OmniGraffle 6 Pro.

You could purchase OmniGraffle 6 from the Mac App Store, or you can purchase a license key direct from us right from within OmniGraffle!

To purchase a license:

1. Open OmniGraffle 6.
2. From the menu bar, choose OmniGraffle ▸ Licenses to open the Licenses window.
3. Click Buy Licenses.

After clicking the Buy Licenses button, you will find yourself magically transported (in your preferred web browser) to the Omni Store, where you can purchase a license for OmniGraffle 6. (Naturally, this only works if you have an Internet connection.)

1. Quit OmniGraffle 6.
2. Open a new Finder window.
3. Switch the Finder’s view settings to Column, by choosing View ▸ as Columns (or use Command-3). This will make it easier for you to traverse the folder hierarchy on your Mac.
4. Choose Go ▸ Computer.
5. Choose your Mac’s hard drive (if you haven’t renamed it, it should be named Macintosh HD), and then traverse through the following folders:

   • Library

   • Application Support
6. In the Application Support folder, create a new folder (choose File ▸ New Folder, or use Shift-Command-N) and name it Omni Group. You will need to enter your admin password to create a new folder at this level.
7. In the Omni Group folder, create a new folder and name it Software Licenses.
8. Open OmniGraffle 6 again, and then choose OmniGraffle ▸ Licenses.
9. Click Add License.

When you click Add License, you’ll notice that the Type drop-down menu is no longer grayed out, and the Computer option is available for selection. Now just enter the Owner and License Key information you received from us, click Save, and you should be set.

1. Choose OmniGraffle ▸ Licenses.
2. In the Licenses window, select the license you want to remove.
3. Click Delete License.
4. An alert sheet appears, asking you to confirm that you really, really want to delete the license. If you are certain that you want to do this, click Delete. If you’ve changed your mind, click Cancel and then close the Licenses window.

Again, the thing to remember here is that license keys are version-specific; the license key you have for OmniGraffle 5 is not compatible with OmniGraffle 6 (and vice versa).

• a* — zero or more instances of a (matches the longest string possible)
• a*? — zero or more instances of a (matches the shortest string possible)
• a+ — one or more instances of a (matches the longest string possible)
• a+? — one or more instances of a (matches the shortest string possible)
• a? — zero or one instance of a
• ^ — beginning of a line
• $ — end of a line
• . — any character
• [a-z] — all characters between a and z
• [abc-] — a, b, c, or -
• (abc) — matches abc and stores it as a group. Use the Select or Replace pop-up menu in the Find dialog to select or replace only one of these groups rather than the whole expression.
• \1 — text of first matched group
• a|b — a or b
• \n — newline
• \r — carriage return
• \t — tab character
• \d — digit
• \D — non-digit
• \w — word character (alphanumeric or underscore)
• \W — non-word character
• \s — whitespace
• \S — non-whitespace
• \ — escape the next character

Regular expressions are very popular, so you should be able to find plenty of information about them on the internet or in a good library or bookstore. Here are a few examples to get you started:

• \s*$ — matches whitespace at the end of a line.
• <.*?> — matches strings that begin with < and end with >, such as XML tags.
• \S+@\S+ — very liberally matches things that resemble email addresses (anything@anything).
• (19|20)\d\d-\d\d?-\d\d? — matches dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD, between 1900 and 2099

Canvases give you the flexibility to separate your work into distinct areas in the same document. Not sure if you like the style of the diagram you’ve been working on? Duplicate the canvas and apply a new set of styles so you can see which one you like best.

For those times when all you want is to work on the Canvas and not be distracted by the sidebars, remember that Option-Command–1 hides the Sidebar on the left, and Shift-Command-I hides the Inspectors sidebar on the right.

Diagram styles come in handy when you’re creating an outline with OmniGraffle’s Outline Editor (View ▸ Show Contents ▸ Outline Editor, or Option-Command–3). The Outline Editor is a great way to quickly enter information and set up relationships for the objects in a diagram. To quickly style all of the elements, choose Format ▸ Choose Diagram Style to select and apply a style set to your diagram.

You can also import an OmniOutliner file and automatically apply a Diagram Style in the Import Outline dialog. Use the pop-up menu at the top of the dialog to select which Diagram Style to apply, select either New Document to create a new document or New Canvas to add a new canvas to your current OmniGraffle document, and then click OK.

OmniGraffle applies the chosen Diagram Style to text imported from the OmniOutliner file and translates that text into visible objects on the canvas. When you apply a diagram style, the items of the outline are styled to match the diagram style’s shapes, connection lines, and automatic layout settings. Items at each level of the outline become shape objects, matching objects at the same level of the diagram. If the outline has more levels than the diagram style, the deeper items use the styles of the deepest level of the diagram style.

Diagram Styles make it easy for you to get a visual representation of something that might otherwise just appear to be static text. For example, if you are a writer, this is a great way to map out the relationships of different characters or to visualize the story arc of that novel you’ve been working on. What’s more, OmniGraffle comes packed with a variety of Diagram Styles, so if you don’t like one, you can always apply another by choosing Format ▸ Choose Diagram Style and selecting a different style.

You can force manually styled objects to conform to the diagram style by selecting them and choosing Format ▸ Restyle Selected Objects, or you can force all objects on the canvas to conform by choosing Format ▸ Reapply Diagram Style.

• OmniPresence is a free utility that you install on your Mac for synchronizing files. OmniPresence runs in the background, watching a “connected folder.” It makes sure the files inside are in sync with files in the cloud (a WebDAV server of your choice), and with your OmniPresence-enabled iPad apps.

  On iPad, OmniPresence is built into all of our current document-based apps, including OmniOutliner 2 and OmniGraffle 1. You’ll access OmniPresence folders and files from within the app’s respective Resource Browsers. The result is that all of your OmniPresence-enabled devices detect changes wherever you make them, and constantly sync up to keep your files up to date.

  To get started, you’ll need to download OmniPresence for Mac from our website.

  Note
  OmniPresence isn’t a replacement for your current sync solution for OmniFocus or OmniPlan:

  • OmniFocus uses its own built-in sync code (rather than OmniPresence) to push database changes to a WebDAV server and retrieve them from it; OmniFocus for Mac doesn’t require OmniPresence to be installed for its sync to function to work.
  • OmniPlan uses a publish-and-subscribe feature for sharing project files. For example, you can create a project plan in OmniPlan and share it (publish) with people on the team who are responsible for certain tasks. In turn, they subscribe to the project so they can see and report on the tasks they’re assigned.

• Omni Sync Server is a magical box that lives in a well-air conditioned room with our other servers and a herd of unicorns. Omni Sync Server is our own custom WebDAV server and it functions as a central hub for all your syncing needs; it’s what OmniPresence connects to when shuttling files between your Mac and iOS devices.

  With Omni Sync Server, we never ever look at your data without your permission. For example, when our Support Humans are working with you to restore a corrupt file or isolate a particular issue you’re having with our server. Beyond that, you can rest assured that your data is safe and secure on Omni Sync Server.

To use Omni Sync Server, you’ll first need to sign up for an account. Don’t worry, though, it’s free. If you don’t have an account already, head over to our website and sign up for an Omni Sync Server account today. Like, right now.

With OmniPresence turned on, the WebDAV server you designate (either Omni Sync Server or your own or a third-party WebDAV server) manages synchronization so that your files are always up to date. With each subsequent sync, OmniPresence compares your local files and applies any differences to your files on the server. This ensures that your files are not just up to date, they’re available wherever—and whenever—you need them.

We’ve also built in an automatic sync mechanism. When you save an OmniGraffle file to an OmniPresence-enabled folder (or when an Auto Save occurs), OmniPresence updates the file on the sync server. At a bare minimum, OmniPresence checks in with Omni Sync Server every hour and compares files in your sync folder. If nothing has changed, OmniPresence quietly goes back to watching over your files. This helps ensure that your OmniGraffle files are always safe, secure, and most importantly—up to date.

To install OmniPresence, follow these steps:

1. Open a Finder window and go to the Downloads folder on your Mac.
2. Locate and then double-click the file, OmniPresence-1.1.dmg.

   Note
   The filename you see might be slightly different. As of this writing, OmniPresence for Mac is at version 1.1 (thus the filename, OmniPresence-1.1.dmg). If you see a different number in the filename, don’t be worried; just go ahead and double-click that one. It just means that our engineering team have been hard at work to improve OmniPresence for Mac.

3. After agreeing to our license, you’re presented with the following window:

   

4. Drag and drop the OmniPresence.app icon onto the Applications folder to install OmniPresence on your Mac.

   

5. Close that window with Command-W
6. In the Finder window, eject the disk image.
7. In the Finder window, return to your Downloads folder. Select the file OmniPresence-1.1.dmg and press Command-Delete to move the file to your Trash. The next time you empty the Trash, that disk image will be purged from your system, saving you precious disk space. (You’re welcome!)

Even if you’re only using OmniGraffle on your Mac, syncing is recommended for the automated data backup it provides. Best of all, our Omni Sync Server is free, and we take care of managing the servers so your data is always available when you need it most.

Let’s get started! (No pun intended. Okay, maybe.)

1. Open a Finder window, and choose Applications in the Finder’s sidebar. (If you don’t see it there, choose Go ▸ Applications, or use Shift-Command-A.)

   

2. Scroll down in the list of applications installed on your Mac and locate OmniPresence.app.
3. Double-click the OmniPresence.app icon to open the app. OmniPresence installs and then pops open a menu extra in the menu bar; this is where you’ll configure and control OmniPresence.
4. Click Set Up Syncing:

   

5. Click Create a Synced Folder:

   

6. In the sheet that appears, you have the option to name the OmniPresence folder that lives on your Mac. We’ve pre-filled the New Folder with OmniPresence, but you can change this to whatever you’d like.

   Also, this folder is created within your Documents folder. You can also change this to something else, if you’d like. For example, you could opt to have your OmniPresence folder reside at the bottom level of your Home folder.

   

   When you’ve settled on a name and location for your OmniPresence folder—or if you’ve decided to go with the default options—click Save. This creates the folder OmniPresence uses to synchronize your files.

7. After creating the OmniPresence folder, your next task is to choose a server in the cloud where OmniPresence stores your synced files.

   

   You have two options to choose from:

   • Omni Sync Server: This is Omni’s free file server, which has specifically been designed to work in unison with OmniPresence.
   • Web Server: This could be your own WebDAV server, or a WebDAV server hosted by a third-party provider.

   If you have an Omni Sync Server account, enter your Account Name and Password in the applicable fields and click Connect.

   Note
   If you haven’t already set up an Omni Sync Server account, click Sign Up for an Omni Sync Server Account. This opens your default web browser and transports you to the Omni Sync Server site where you can sign up for an account and set your password.

8. After clicking Connect, OmniPresence connects to the server you’ve chosen and tests for server compatibility. This is more of an issue with third-party WebDAV servers than it is for connecting to Omni Sync Server, which has been designed to work with OmniPresence.

   

   OmniPresence lets you know if it is able to connect to Omni Sync Server (or the WebDAV server you’ve specified).

9. Click the checkbox for Open OmniPresence at Login if you would like OmniPresence to start up whenever your log into your Mac.

   

   At the bottom of that window, click Open Synced Folder. This syncs your OmniPresence folder with Omni Sync Server (or a WebDAV server). If you already have an Omni Sync Server account, OmniPresence creates new synchronized versions of those files in the folder you’ve specified.

   

That’s it! Once OmniPresence connects with Omni Sync Server and creates the sync folder on your Mac, you’re ready to go. Whenever you create files with OmniGraffle, be sure to save them to your OmniPresence folder (~/Documents/OmniPresence). OmniPresence syncs the files whenever you save, or when an Auto Save takes place on your Mac.

OmniPresence Tips

Here are some helpful tips for enhancing your OmniPresence experience:

• You can create subfolders within the main OmniPresence folder for the files you sync. For example, you could have subfolders for OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, and OmniPlan, as well as other files you want to sync.
• You can Pause and Resume syncing by clicking the OmniPresence icon in the menu bar.

• Click the Action menu (the gear next to the Pause/Resume button) for a host of OmniPresence options, including:

  

  • About OmniPresence
  • Release Notes
  • Open at Login
  • Check for Updates
  • Preferences and Privacy
  • OmniPresence Help
  • Contact Omni
  • Quit OmniPresence
• To stop syncing a folder you’ve connected, click its Info button and choose Disconnect. The folder on your Mac will be moved to the Trash and the files inside will no longer be synced. Any files left in the folder before disconnecting will stay safe and sound at the cloud server location you’ve specified. To reconnect and start syncing with those files again, just create a new folder connected to that cloud location.

  

• Unsure of when OmniPresence last synced? Click the OmniPresence icon in the menubar and then look beneath each folder name to see the date and time that folder last synced.

  

When you select an object on the Canvas, the inspector sidebar switches over to the Object inspector automatically. From there, you can use the inspectors to change anything about the selected object.

To select several objects at once, click in an empty area of the canvas and drag a box around the objects. If you hold Option, only objects entirely inside the rectangle are selected. You can also Command- or Shift-click an object to add it to or remove it from the selection.

To select a member of a group, table, or subgraph, click once to select the group as a whole, then click again to select the member. The rest of the canvas dims to show that you are in group editing mode. Click anywhere outside the group to leave group editing mode.

If you’re using a Mac with a touch-sensitive trackpad, you can use the rotate gesture with two fingers to rotate the selected objects (be sure that Multi-Touch gestures are enabled in OmniGraffle ▸ Preferences ▸ General ▸ Multi-Touch).

To move the selected object very precisely, press the Arrow keys. Hold Option or Shift to move by larger steps.

With Smart Guides enabled (Arrange ▸ Guides ▸ Smart Alignment Guides and Smart Distance Guides), you can line up objects and space them on the Canvas precisely. Hold Command after you start dragging to temporarily enable or disable Smart Guides.

To drag a copy of an object instead of the object itself, hold Option as you drag.

To change the shape’s size, use the Selection tool to click and drag one of the resize controls. As you click and drag on one of the handles, you’ll notice that the object is anchored by the opposing handle, and the object resizes in the direction you are moving the mouse.

The following keys provide additional functionality when interacting with the resizing handles:

• Hold Shift while resizing to maintain the aspect ratio of the original object.
• Hold Option to resize an object with its center point being anchored.
• Hold Shift-Option while resizing to maintain the aspect ratio and resize the object based on its center point.
• Hold Command, and the resize control changes to a rotate control so you can rotate the object.

If you have objects of different sizes on the canvas, but would like them to be the same size, first select the object that has the dimensions you'd like the others to emulate, choose Arrange ▸ Size and then choose one of the resizing options.

If you select a table, the edge handles look like little grids. You can drag them to change the number of rows or columns in the table. Drag the corner handles to resize the table normally.

Any line (created with the Line tool) has two points: a red one at its source and a green one at its destination. A line may also pass through any number of blue midpoints. Drag one of the points to move it; by dragging the source or destination point you can make the line connect to or disconnect from other objects.

Custom shapes (created with the Pen tool) and Bézier-type lines have control points at each vertex. Click a control point to select it; if a control point is hiding behind a selection handle, Option-Command-click to select it, or just select a different control point first to make the handles go away. If a control point has Bézier handles, they appear when you select the point:

• Drag either of the two handles to adjust both, or Option-drag to adjust them one at a time.
• Shift-drag to constrain the handle’s angle to 45-degree increments.
• Command-drag a point to give it handles.
• If you drag a handle close enough to the point itself, the handle disappears entirely.

The default way to add points to an existing line is to double-click the line, but this can be changed in the General preferences (OmniGraffle ▸ Preferences ▸ General).

To add a point to a custom shape, double-click somewhere along the shape’s stroke.

To delete a point from a line or a custom shape, select it and then either press the Delete key or select Edit ▸ Delete from the menu bar.

To create a shape:

• Drag across the canvas until you get the size you want.

• Hold Shift while dragging to make a shape of equal width and height (a perfect square, a perfect circle, and so on).

Once you have created a shape, you can select it and change its attributes with the Object, Type, and Properties inspectors.

To create a new line:

• Click where you would like the source of the line; this can be an object (to which the line will stay attached) or an empty spot on the canvas (so the beginning of the line remains unattached).

• Click as many empty spots on the canvas as you like to give the line midpoints.

• End the line at an object by clicking the object (to which the line will stay attached), or end the line at an empty spot on the canvas by double-clicking there; this can be changed in the Drawing Tools preferences (OmniGraffle ▸ Preferences ▸ Drawing Tools ▸ Line Editing).

Hold Shift while drawing a line to constrain the next point to angles at 45-degree increments from the previous point. Hold Option while drawing a line to prevent it from connecting to objects.

When two objects are connected by a line, the object at the source is considered the parent of the object at the destination. This defines the objects’ relationship in the outline view and when you use automatic layout.

Lines can have line labels attached to them. Click a line with the Text tool to create a new text label. Or, drag an existing blob of text to the line until the line is highlighted, then drop it to attach it as a label.

Click a shape to start editing its text. While you are in text editing mode, the top ruler becomes a text ruler, and you can use standard OS X text editing commands (for example, you can use the arrow keys to move the insertion point around).

Click or drag in an empty area of the canvas to create a new shape with settings particularly suited to containing text. A single click creates an object that expands horizontally to fit the text you enter; a drag creates an object of a specific width. Remember that the objects you create in this way are not fundamentally different from other shapes; they just start with certain settings in the Text inspector which make them convenient for containing text.

Click a connection line to add a new label to it. This label is just like the object created when you click an empty area of the canvas, except it is attached as a line label.

Text inside objects can be found by OS X’s Spotlight search feature, in case you need to find your OmniGraffle diagrams that contain certain words.

To start a new shape, click anywhere on the canvas. Each subsequent click adds a new point to the shape, until you double-click or press Return to make the final point. At any step along the way, instead of just clicking, click and drag to create a point with Bézier handles. While creating a shape, you can press Delete to remove the last point you added.

Bézier handles can define any shape, once you get the hang of them. Each point can have a handle facing the next point, and a handle facing the previous point. The line between two points is defined by the first point’s forward-facing handle and the second point’s backward-facing handle. With no handles at all, you get a perfectly straight line. With handles, the line between them is a curve that tries to compromise between the handles’ length and direction. This is truly one of those things that makes a ton more sense once you try it for yourself, so please do.

Once you have created a shape, you can select it with the Selection tool and edit its points, adjust existing handles, add handles to points without them, or change the shape’s attributes with the Object, Type, and Properties inspectors.

You can move the divider in the Drawing Tools preferences to change which tools are available in the palette’s collapsed state, or get rid of the Expando-Collapso button entirely.

With nothing selected, click any empty spot on the Canvas to create a new generic shape there and select it. Once you have a shape selected, try some of these combinations:

• Click any empty spot on the canvas to create a new shape connected to the original one.
• Hold Option to create a sibling (connected to the same parent as the selected shape) instead.
• Hold Shift to add an aunt (essentially reversing the connection line of the new object).
• Hold Command to create a completely disconnected shape.

If you already have an object on the Canvas, first select it with the Selection Tool so that you can use it as a starting point for creating more connected shapes, and then switch to the Diagram Tool by pressing and holding the d key.

Once you get the hang of the modifier keys, you can create really complex diagrams with just a few clicks.

The tool’s popup menu contains a list of styles that can be absorbed; select whichever ones you like, and the brush will only absorb or apply those styles. For example, if you only select Fill, you can apply a certain fill style to objects without affecting any of their other styles.

To reset the contents of the brush, select Clear Contents from the Brush tool’s popup menu; you can then absorb a new style. You can also Option-click a different object to replace the brush’s contents.

If you hold the Shift key down, the Rubber Stamp tool will align the soon-to-be-pasted object along the centerline (either horizontally or vertically) of the original or previously pasted copy.

To reset the contents of the stamp, select Clear Contents from the tool’s popup menu; you can then grab a new object. You can also Option-click a different object to replace the stamp’s contents.

Magnets are special spots on a shape that attract connection lines. If there are no magnets on a shape, all lines connect to the shape’s center by default. If there is at least one magnet, each connected line is attracted to the nearest one. You can also connect lines directly to magnets, to make sure they stay connected to the same magnet regardless of how the shape is moved.

You can view the magnet presets in the Connections inspector (Command–3). However, if you want to place magnets in very specific places on a shape, click the Magnet Tool and then click anywhere on the object.

To change a magnet’s position on the object, click and drag an existing magnet to another location. If an object has more than one magnet, Smart Guides will appear so you can align the magnets as well. To delete a magnet, Shift- or Option-click on a magnet.

Click and drag a box across the canvas to specify the rectangle you would like to zoom to; the shading shows the area that will be visible in the window when you let go. If you Option-drag, the rectangle is centered on the spot where you start dragging. While dragging, press and hold Shift to move the zoom selection area around instead of resizing it.

Shift-click the zoom tool in the tool palette to return to 100 percent zoom, or actual size.

You can always zoom to a specific percentage with the zoom menu in the lower-right of the canvas window.

If your Mac has a Multi-Touch–capable trackpad, you can use it to change the zoom level using the pinch gesture. To enable Multi-Touch, go to OmniGraffle ▸ Preferences ▸ General ▸ Multi-Touch and turn on Enable Multi-Touch trackpad gestures. Now you can pinch open to zoom in, or pinch close to zoom out. Multi-Touch zoom makes it much easier for you to zoom-in and -out on the objects on the Canvas.

You’ll mostly use the Hand tool when you’re zoomed in on the canvas and want to move to a different location. For this, use the Hand tool’s quick access key, the Space Bar, to switch the mouse pointer to a hand, and then click and drag to move the canvas around.

As you drag, you’ll notice that the open hand changes to a clutched fist to indicate that you’re grabbing onto the Canvas.

The secret here is that you assign actions to objects using the Action properties inspector (Command–3), which is only available in OmniGraffle Pro. First create and select an object on the Canvas, then switch to the Action properties inspector. By default, an object Does Nothing, which means it just sits there on the canvas looking pretty. Other Actions you can bind to an object include:

• Opens a URL — lets you assign a URL to open; when clicked, the page opens in the user’s default web browser.
• Opens a File — lets you assign a file to open; when clicked, the file opens in the default app based on that file type’s preferences. You can also choose to open a synchronized file in an OmniPresence folder.
• Runs a Script — runs an AppleScript when the object is clicked.
• Jumps Elsewhere — lets you jump to another Canvas in the OmniGraffle project, highlight other objects, or zoom in or out on the canvas.
• Shows or Hides Layers — lets you show or hide specific layers in your project.

The Actions you assign to an object make it easy for you to create highly interactive presentations and even UI mockups for that killer iOS app you’re designing.

For more details, see Making Objects Interactive with the Action Inspector.

The Inspectors sidebar contains five inspectors—Object, Type, Properties, Canvas, and Document—and the Stencils Library, which used to have its own floating palette in earlier versions of OmniGraffle. Inspectors are grouped by the type of content they govern. You can browse the various Inspector categories by clicking the icons along the top of the sidebar. Within each Inspector, you’ll find multiple, collapsable inspectors for changing the properties of an object.

To open an Inspector, hover over the title with the mouse, and then click on the disclosure triangle to open and use the inspector. To open one particular inspector (for example the Stroke inspector) and close any other open inspectors, Shift-Option-click on the disclosure triangle. To open or close all of the inspectors, Shift-Command-click on one of the disclosure triangles.

In all of the inspectors, you can click in a text field that contains a number, and then press the up or down arrow keys to increment or decrement the number. Also, once you click a circular rotation control, you can keep the mouse button held down while moving the pointer away from the control to gain more rotational precision.

Any color well can have its color dragged to an object on the canvas or to another color well. When you drag to an object, you can drop the color on the object’s stroke, fill, or text.

In places where you can enter measurements, such as in the Geometry inspector, values are shown in the current ruler units, or, if there is no unit scale, in the canvas units. You can, however, enter values in any units that are available in the ruler, such as miles or kilometers. As soon as you finish entering the value, OmniGraffle converts it to the correct units automatically.

You can also perform simple arithmetic and mix units. Add (+), subtract (−), multiply (*), or divide (/) numbers right in the input fields.

• Use the pop-up menu on the left side of the inspector to choose from the nine kinds of fill: Solid, Linear Blend, Radial Blend, Double Linear Blend, Double Radial Blend, Stipple, Marker, and Squiggle. No Fill is also available as an option for objects where transparency is desired.

• The blend rotation control becomes active when you choose a linear blend; enter a number of degrees in the field or drag the circular control to set the angle of the gradient. The blend position control becomes active when you choose a radial gradient; drag its crosshair to move the gradient’s center.

• Click the color well to choose the color of the fill.

• If you have chosen a two-color blend, you can click the swap button to exchange the two colors.

• If you choose a blend, two or three color wells become available. Click them to choose the colors to blend together.

• Drag the bias slider on the far right to shift a blend toward one side or the other.

You can also edit the fill color of a canvas itself using the Canvas Fill inspector.

• Use the dropdown menu to choose a single stroke, double stroke, freehand stroke, or no stroke at all.

• Click the color well to choose a color for the stroke.

• Enter a number in the Thickness field or use the keyboard arrows to choose how thick the stroke should be.

• The first of the three pop-up menus determines the stroke pattern (solid, dashed, dotted, and so on). The center pop-up menu determines how the stroke appears at its ends: The Butt option ends the line by cutting across its endpoint at an angle perpendicular to the line itself, while the Round and Square options let the line extend past its endpoint based on the stroke width. The third pop-up menu determines how the stroke appears at its corners: Miter creates a sharp corner, Round creates a soft corner, and Bevel creates a cut-off corner.

• Click the leftmost button to choose whether the selected object has a shadow, and if the shadow appears in front of objects or behind objects on the same layer. If you choose to let shadows appear in front of objects on the same layer, the ordering of objects matters; you can reorder objects with the Bring and Send commands in the Arrange menu.

• Enter a number in the blur field or use the keyboard arrows to choose how precise or blurry the shadow should be.

• Drag the crosshair in the offset control or enter numbers in the offset fields to set how far away from the object the shadow should fall.

• Click the color well in the upper-right to choose a color for the shadow; partially transparent black tends to work best.

• To change the shape to another, the upper right button provides a grid containing available shapes. It includes all of OmniGraffle’s built-in shapes plus all of the current canvas’s custom shapes (ones created with the pen tool or shape combinations).

• Use the Corner Radius field to set how round the corners of the shape should be; enter 0 for perfectly pointy corners.

• The three pop-up menus determine the style of the tail, middle, and head of the line. Use the tail and head menus to set the line endings. Use the middle menu to set how the line travels from its source to its destination: Straight for a line that takes the shortest possible path between points, Curved for a line that turns smoothly to pass through each point, Orthogonal for a line that always travels horizontally or vertically, or Bézier for a line with control points you can adjust with the selection tool.

• Use the fields below the tail and head menus to change the line ending sizes. Click the reverse button to swap the line’s source and destination points.

• Click Remove Midpoints to get rid of all points between the source and destination points.

• The Line Hops menu determines what the line should do when it crosses other lines; choose one of the hop types to make the line jump over or under other lines, or choose Ignore this line to prevent other lines from hopping over or under it. The hops depend on the ordering of the lines involved; you can reorder objects with the Bring and Send commands in the Arrange menu.

• Use the Image pop-up menu to set an image in the selected shape. Once an image is set, a Remove Image command appears in the menu.

• When you browse for an image file, you have the option of creating an alias (or “link”) to the image instead of adding the image to the OmniGraffle file itself. If you do this, the OmniGraffle document depends on the original image file; the alias will not work if you delete the image file or open the document on a different computer. If an object’s image comes from an alias, some extra commands become available in the Image pop-up menu: you can Open the original image file, Reveal the original file in the Finder, or stop using the alias and Embed a copy of the image in the OmniGraffle document.

• Another way to set an image is just to drag an image file from another application and drop it on the image well, or on the shape object itself.

• The first button displays the image at its natural aspect ratio, with a zoom level and position as set with the controls below. The second button makes the image stretch to fit inside the object. The third button makes the image tile indefinitely across the object.

• The positioning offsets are enabled if you are displaying the image at its natural aspect ratio, as set by the first of the three buttons above. You can type a positive or negative percentage, or just drag the image around in the image well to indicate the area you want.

• The zoom controls are available unless you are stretching the image to fit the shape. You can enter a zoom percentage, or just drag the slider, to make the image larger or smaller.

• You can make the image transparent and let the object’s fill show through by decreasing the value of the opacity field, or by dragging the opacity slider.

• To rotate the object, enter a degree value in the rotation field, or drag the circular control.

• The top two fields contain the X and Y (horizontal and vertical) coordinates for the selected objects; the value represents the distance between the canvas’s origin and the upper-left corner of the object (which might not be obvious if the object is rotated or flipped). If you have multiple objects selected, two hyphens (- -) appear in the fields that have different values. Enter a new X or Y value to move an object on the canvas.

• The next two fields contain the Width and Height values for the selected objects. If you have multiple objects selected, two hyphens (- -) appear in the fields that have different values. Enter a new width or height value to resize an object on the canvas.

• Click the flip buttons to reverse the object horizontally or vertically.

• Next to the flip buttons is a pop-up menu with the following options:

  • No scaling — by default, the objects you draw on the canvas are not scaled to any size or proportion.
  • Maintain Aspect Ratio — the objects you draw or resize are scaled proportionally. In addition, there are three additional aspect-related options:
    • Scale Stroke — scales the object’s stroke proportionally.
    • Scale Font — scales any text inside the object proportionally.
    • Scale Stroke and Font — scales the objects stroke and text proportionally.

If you have selected a line label, two additional controls become active:

Use the pop-up menu to set how the label’s text appears in relation to the line. Options include: Horizontal, Vertical, Parallel, Perpendicular, Independent, and Follows Path. Use the slider next to the pop-up menu to change the label’s position in relation to the line.

• The matrix of nine buttons on the left changes how the alignment buttons work. It represents all of the combinations between vertically aligning to the top, middle, or bottom, and horizontally aligning to the left, center, or right. If you want, for example, to align objects by their upper-right corners, click the upper-right button in the matrix.

• Next to the button matrix are the align buttons. Their icons change to reflect the state of the button matrix. Click the horizontal-align button to line up the selected objects horizontally. Click the vertical-align button to line up the selected objects vertically. The first object you selected stays where it is, and the other selected objects move to align with it. These buttons are only useful when you have at least two objects selected.

• Next to the align buttons are two spread buttons. Click the horizontal spread button to distribute the selected objects evenly between the leftmost and rightmost objects. Click the vertical spread button to distribute the selected objects evenly between the top and bottom objects. These buttons are only useful when you have at least three objects selected.

• To the right are two fields and their associated spacing buttons. Enter a value in the top field and click the horizontal spacing button to put the specified amount of horizontal space between the selected objects. Enter a value in the bottom field and click the vertical spacing button to put the specified amount of vertical space between the selected objects. These buttons are only useful if you have at least two objects selected.

• If Align to canvas is selected, the align and spread buttons consider the canvas edges as “objects” when arranging the selected objects. This makes it so that you can align objects to a canvas edge, or space objects evenly between the canvas edges.

• With the horizontal alignment buttons, you can align left, center, align right, or justify the text.

• Click the color well to choose a font color.

• There are three buttons for controlling what happens when the shape contains more text than can be contained within its bounds. You can choose to let the text overflow outside of the shape, to clip off the text that doesn’t fit inside the shape, or to resize the shape to make the text fit. If you choose resize, the object will only be manually resizable in the horizontal direction; it will resize vertically according to its text. Select the Wrap to shape checkbox to limit the text’s width to the limits set by the Text Offset settings below.

• There are three buttons for setting the vertical alignment of the text; choose to align to the top, middle, or bottom of the shape.

• On the right side are controls for setting the Kerning (automatic character spacing for ideal balance), Tracking (manual character spacing), Leading (distance between lines), and Margins (distance between text and the edges of the text area). These controls become enabled or disabled depending on other controls in the inspector, or the amount of text in the object.

• The Canvas Size fields control the width and height of the canvas. You can use any of the units available in the Ruler, or enter a number of pages.

• Select Size is multiple of printer sheets to make the edges of the canvas snap to the edges of pages. This prevents the canvas from ending in the middle of a page.

• If you select Auto-adjust the canvas size, the canvas will grow or shrink to fit the objects you create.

• When you print, if Print canvas on one printer sheet is selected, the canvas gets scaled up or down to fit a single piece of paper regardless of its size on the screen.

• The Orientation of pages can be portrait (vertical), landscape (horizontal), or can be taken from the settings in Page Setup.

Use the controls to the left of the Mask button to Manually Size, Stretch, or Tile the image you’ve placed. Use the grid of four fields to position the image from left, from top, sized horizontally, or sized vertically. Use the slider at the bottom of the inspector to change the image’s opacity.

The actual size of your diagram does not change when you change the units; it is merely measured differently. The ruler and the inspectors display measurements in whichever unit you select here.

Units marked with an asterisk (*) can be used as canvas units. This means that when you set up a Unit Scale (see the next section), only these units can be used on the left-side “actual size” part of the equation. Any kind of units can be used on the right-side “theoretical size” part of the scale equation.

If you choose Custom from the Scale pop-up, you can change the scale to suit the project you’re currently working on. For example, if you enter 1 cm = 1 m, 1 cm on the ruler now becomes 1 meter, objects on the canvas that were 2 cm wide are now 2 meters wide, and so on. The Units setting changes to match the second value in the equation.

You can also enter a ratio. For example, if you set a Custom Scale to 1:12, the ruler units stay the same, but objects on the canvas now claim to be 12 times larger than they were before you changed the scale.

If you already have a scale set up and you conver directly to a different one, the objects change their actual size on the canvas to fit the new scale. For example, imagine you are working in 1 cm = 1 m, and then you convert the scale to 2 cm = 1 m. The marks on the ruler become twice as far apart as they were, and the objects on the canvas, staying true to the ruler, grow twice as large on the screen. You can get a new scale without resizing the objects by choosing from the Reset Scale To: section of the Unit scale pop-up menu.

The two fields at the top of the inspector are where you can set the values for the Major and Minor Grid spacing, respectively:

• The Major Grid Spacing field determines how large each square of the main grid should be. Click the color well next to it to choose a color for the major grid.

• The Minor Grid Steps field determines how many minor grid squares should fit across one major grid square. For example, if your major grid squares are 100 pixels across, and you have 10 minor grid steps, your minor grid squares are 10 pixels across. Click the color well next to it to choose a color for the minor grid.

The checkboxes beneath the Major and Minor Grid spacing fields provide additional control over how the grid is used and its appearance:

• While the Snap to grid checkbox is selected, all objects fit themselves to the grid as you create or move them. (If you want to snap objects already on the canvas, use the Align To Grid button below.)

• Select Grid in front to make the grid visible in front of objects on the canvas.

• Select Show grid lines to show the Minor Grid lines on the canvas.

• Select Show major to make the heavier Major Grid lines visible as well.

• Select Print grid to include the grid when printing.

Use the Fill Type pop-up (the big button on the left) to select from one of four layout types: Hierarchical (the default), Force-directed, Circular, and Radial. The various controls within the Diagram Layout inspector change depending on which layout type you choose.

Hierarchical

The hierarchical layout creates layers of equally-ranked objects, extending in one direction.

Force-directed

The force-directed layout grows in semi-random directions from the center, rather than in one particular direction from the edge.

Circular

The circular layout tries to arrange sibling shapes in a circle around their parent.

Radial

The radial layout tries to arrange sibling shapes in arcs around their parent.

When you use a hierarchical layout:

• The Direction buttons change where the top level objects start, and which way to layer the lower level objects from there.

• The Rank Separation field controls how far away each level of objects should be from the next.

• The Object Separation field controls how far away each object should be from other objects on the same level.

When you use other layout methods:

• Connection lines can stretch and compress, but you can adjust their average length by dragging the Line Length slider.

• The Shape Repulsion slider determines how strongly the shapes try to avoid coming near one another. If the line length and shape repulsion are small enough, shapes can be made to overlap.

Finally, you can turn on Auto layout to make OmniGraffle distribute the objects on the canvas whenever the connections between them change.

Flat file

A flat file is a single file on the disk, with all of the attached images embedded within.

File package

A file package is actually a folder disguised as a single file, with all of the attached images rattling around loose inside.

In some technical cases, it might be desirable to use one type or the other; if you don’t even know why this should matter, it’s safe to stick with the Automatic setting.

Normally OmniGraffle documents are “property list”–based text files. If you turn on Compress on disk, your file is instead saved in a binary format that takes up less space on the disk but whose innards can’t be read by scripts or text editors. If you don’t need to open an OmniGraffle document with a text editor, just go ahead and compress your files. This won’t hurt anything; it just makes the filesize a wee bit smaller.

All of this data is made available to OS X’s Spotlight searching feature, to help you find the diagram you’re looking for.

• Navigate through the hierarchy of your stencil collection using the back and forward buttons.

• Enter something in the Search field to find stencils whose names match, or stencils containing objects whose text or notes match.

• Select a stencil in the list to see its contents; select a whole folder to see the contents of all the stencils inside.

• With a stencil or folder selected, use the three buttons to the right of the search field to change how the stencils are displayed in the sidebar: as a condensed cluster, a table, or a list with previews and metadata.

• If you don’t need the entire object, but just one or all of its styles, drag a style from the style tray to an object in your document.

To use a stencil, just drag it from the Stencil Library and drop it anywhere on the canvas. A copy of the object is made and the original remains in the Stencil Library, so take as many copies as you need. You can do the same sort of selection tricks that you can do on a canvas, such as Command-clicking or -dragging a rectangle to select multiple objects, or Option-dragging an object to make another copy.

To search your stencils, type in the Search field at the top of the Inspector sidebar. OmniGraffle sifts through your stencils to help you find the object of your desire. Stencils that match appear in the special Search Results section of the stencil list. Normally, if any object on a stencil matches, then all objects on that stencil appear in the results. When searching from within a folder or stencil, however, the search field acts as a filter that only shows objects matching the filter text.

To make a new stencil, choose File ▸ New Resource ▸ New Stencil from the menu bar. You can edit the document that appears just like you would edit a normal OmniGraffle diagram. A preview of the stencil appears in the stencil window as you work. Once the stencil looks just how you want it, choose File ▸ Save (Command-S).

To edit a stencil, open it in the Resource Browser (Shift-Command-N). Then edit and save the stencil just like a normal OmniGraffle document.

The isolated chit on the left represents all of the styles applied to the selected object, while the rest of the chits represent each of the styles applied to the object, such as fill, stroke, image, shadow, shape, font, and text position. Drag any of these chits to another object, to a group in the Selection inspector, or to a tool in the tool palette, to copy the style there.

If you select more than one object, only the styles that those objects have in common appear in the style tray.

You can use a combination of ruler guides and OmniGraffle’s Smart Guides to position and perfectly align objects on the canvas. To add a ruler guide to your canvas, click and hold on either the top or left ruler bar and then drag a guide onto the canvas. The guides you drag in are bright pink, so they are easy to recognize. There’s no limit to the number of guides you can drag onto the canvas, so don’t be shy.

By default, the very upper-left corner of a canvas is known as its origin (that is, the point from which all ruler measurements originate, and the coordinates are 0,0). To change the origin, click and drag the origin from the corner where the rulers meet. (Alternatively, you can enter Origin values in the Units Canvas inspector.) The coordinates in the Geometry inspector are based on this origin point.

To reset the origin to the 0,0 position, just click on the origin point between the two rulers. Click the origin point again and the origin point will change to its previous position.

When editing text, tab stops appear on the ruler and text formatting controls appear above it. You can style text, change the spacing and alignment, or drag tab stops to and from the ruler.

When you aren’t editing text, the area above the ruler—the Inspector Bar—contains controls for editing basic attributes of selected objects:

1. Horizontal Object Position — the object’s position from the left origin point.
2. Vertical Object Position — the object’s position from the top origin point.
3. Object Width — the object’s width.
4. Object Height — the object’s height.
5. Shadow Casting Style — set the shadow style for the object; for additional control over shadows, see the Shadow inspector.
6. Shape Style — this pop-up lets you quickly select a shape style for the selected object.
7. Stroke — choose a stroke style for the selected object.
8. Stroke Color — choose a color for the stroke.
9. Stroke Thickness — set the width (or thickness) for a stroke.

To open a template, choose File ▸ Resource Browser (Shift-Command-N) and select one of the available Templates.

When you select a template in the Resource Browser, you’ll notice that the right side of the window reveals a little more detail about the template. If you find that you’re using a particular template often, click Make Default to specify the selected template as the default.

After you set a default template, OmniGraffle bypasses the Resource Browser and uses the default template for any new documents you create. If you don’t want to use the default template, just open the Resource Browser (Shift-Command-N) and choose something else.

You can also create a new template or edit a template that belongs to you. When you create an OmniGraffle template, everything about it is preserved, from the canvas size and grid layout, to layers, to visibility of extras, to the automatic layout settings.

To create a template, choose File ▸ New Resource ▸ New Template from the menu bar, and then choose an existing template to use as a starting point. Set up the document exactly the way you want it, then save it to the Templates folder that OmniGraffle has already set up on your Mac. Once saved, your template is available in the Templates section of the Resource Browser.

Two features that all of the preference panes offer are the ability to Reset () any changes you’ve made to the defaults settings, and quick access to Help () documentation for that pane.

Options include:

Startup

Select Create new document if nothing else is open to start with a new document when you aren’t making OmniGraffle remember open documents, or if there were no open documents the last time you quit.

New Documents

Select Open Resource Browser to be presented with a window for choosing from a variety of file sources each time you create a new document. Select Use Template, and choose your default template, if you’d rather bypass the browser. Either way, you can always get to the browser with the Resource Browser command in the File menu.

Text Editing

Decide how you would like the Return and Tab keys to behave while you are editing an object’s text. Whichever way you choose, you can hold Option while pressing the key to do the reverse instead.

Selection

Small objects get smaller versions of the handles that appear when you select them; if you really like the small ones, you can click Always use small selection handles to see them all the time.

When you click in the middle of a shape object that isn’t filled with an image or color, you might want to select the object or you might want to select whatever is behind it. Use the Click through objects with no fill checkbox to indicate which you prefer.

Multi-Touch

If you’d like to use Multi-Touch gestures with a trackpad on a compatible MacBook Pro or other device, click the checkbox here.

Help Tags

When you move or resize an object, a little help tag appears to let you know the object’s new location and size exactly. That is, unless you find it annoying and turn it off here.

Full Screen

Choose whether to display the toolbar when in full screen mode.

Inspectors

Choose whether to hide inspectors that don’t apply to the currently selected object.

Preferences Reset button

Each preference pane has a Reset button in the lower left. Clicking this button returns all of the settings on the pane to their defaults. To reset all settings on all preference panes, hold Option while clicking the Reset button.

You can drag tools around in the list to reorder them in the palette. Move the separator line to change where the expansion button appears in the toolbar; move it to the end of the list to get rid of the button entirely.

Double-click a tool’s hot key to change it. A hot key activates a tool for only as long as you hold the key down; once you release the key, the previously active tool becomes active again.

Inspect a tool

By default, in order to inspect a tool you need to Option-click it. If you prefer, you can make it take just one normal click to inspect a tool.

Keep tool active

By default, it takes one click to temporarily activate a tool, and two clicks to make a tool “stick” in an active state. You can choose to make tools stick after only one click, or make it so that every tool selection is temporary.

Line Creation

When you are creating a line, clicking an object will always connect the line to the object and end the line. If you click in an empty area of the canvas, though, you might want to end the line there or you might want just to add a point there and continue creating the line. Use this preference setting to indicate which you prefer.

Line Editing

When you double-click a line, you might prefer to add a new point to the line, or you might prefer to add a label. Choose one; Option-double-click will do the other.

You can specify whether OmniGraffle will automatically check for updates Daily, Weekly, or Monthly, or if you’re really impatient, you can click Check for Updates Now to see if we’ve issued a new release. This is particularly helpful if you have Check for updates set to check Monthly and you’ve recently heard that a new update is available.

If Check for updates is turned on, you will be notified when there is a new version of OmniGraffle ready for you to download and enjoy. Click Check for Updates Now to look for the newest version manually; you can also choose OmniGraffle ▸ Check for Updates from the menu bar.

Additionally, you can opt in to Include system information when OmniGraffle checks for updates. This sends basic information about your system to us, which we only use to better support various systems with future releases of OmniGraffle. And, as the Update preferences pane says: “We promise to never use your information for nefarious purposes,” which means that the information we receive about your system stays with us and is only used by us as we work on future updates of OmniGraffle.

In OmniGraffle 6, however, these two sidebars were combined into one that’s split in half with Canvases on top, and Contents below. This split-level sidebar gives you more room to work with on the Canvas, while still giving you access to your project’s canvases, layers, and the contents editors in one convenient place. Hover over the sidebar just above the Contents section and the pointer changes to a resize control; click and drag up or down to make one

• Click the Hide/Show Sidebar button in the toolbar
• Choose View ▸ Hide/Show Sidebar in the menu bar
• Use the Option-Command–1 keyboard shortcut

To work on a Canvas, select the canvas by either clicking its name or the preview icon in the sidebar. When you do, the preview icon takes on a light blue highlight, and any objects appear on the working canvas in the middle of OmniGraffle’s window.

Each Canvas has a title, a disclosure triangle for showing its layers, and a preview image:

• To select a canvas, click its name or the preview image. The canvas appears in the document window, where you can add and edit objects.
• To rename a canvas, double-click its name in the sidebar.
• To create a new canvas, click the new canvas button at the bottom of the sidebar.
• To delete a canvas, select the preview image in the sidebar and then use one of the following options:
  • Press the Delete key
  • Choose Edit ▸ Canvases ▸ Delete Canvas
  • Control-click on the preview icon and select Delete Canvas from the contextual menu
  • Choose Delete Canvas from the Action menu at the bottom of the sidebar next to the Search field

Canvases can be dragged around to rearrange their order, or to copy them between documents.

To change the style attributes of a canvas, first click its preview in the sidebar, and then use the Canvas inspectors (Command–4) to change its style and other attributes such as size, units, grid, and whether or not auto layout is turned on.

If you click on the Guides icon (the pink square to the right of each canvas), you’ll find OmniGraffle 6’s new Guides pop-up. To add a new guide, just click +; new guides are spaced apart evenly, or you can enter a specific value to position the guide exactly where you need it.

Using any of the color wells, you can choose a default color for your guides, or set their colors individually. This is particularly helpful when you have a background image with varying colors (such as a gradient) that might clash with an otherwise default guide color.

Using the icons in the upper-right corner of the Guides pop-up, you can also toggle the guides’ visibility or lock them into position.

By default, the layers are hidden beneath a disclosure triangle. To see all of the layers in your Canvas, click the disclosure triangle to flip it open; click it again to hide the layers.

Each layer in the list has a small Preview icon of its contents, a Title, and a row of four icons underneath the title.

The layer you are currently editing has a Pencil icon to its left. To edit a different layer, just click to the left of its preview and the pencil icon moves there.

To make a layer visible or invisible, click its Eye icon. To set whether a layer is printable, click the Printer icon. To lock or unlock a layer, click the Lock icon; locking a layer prevents its contents from being changed.

You can rearrange layers by dragging them up or down in the list. You can also drag a layer from one Canvas to another, or you can Option-drag a layer to copy it instead. If you drag a layer to a different OmniGraffle document, the layer is always copied.

To add a new layer:

• Click the New Layer button in the toolbar
• Choose Edit ▸ Layers ▸ New Layer
• Choose New Layer from the Action Menu at the bottom of the sidebar next to the Search field

To delete a layer:

• Select it and then press the Delete key
• Choose Delete Layer from the Action Menu at the bottom of the sidebar
• Control-click on a layer and select Delete Layer from the contextual menu
• Select the layer and choose Edit ▸ Delete

And remember, if you delete a layer by accident, you can always hit Command-Z to restore the layer.

To switch between the different sections of the Contents sidebar, you can either click on the buttons in the header row for the Contents sidebar, or:

• List View:
  • Choose View ▸ Show Contents ▸ List View
  • Use the Option-Command–2 keyboard shortcut
• Outline Editor:
  • Choose View ▸ Show Contents ▸ Outline Editor
  • Use the Option-Command–3 keyboard shortcut
• Selection Matrix:
  • Choose View ▸ Show Contents ▸ Selection Matrix
  • Use the Option-Command–4 keyboard shortcut

The layers in your project have like-named sections in the Contents section as well. This makes it easy for you to keep track of different elements of your project.

As you select an object in the Contents section, the Inspectors (see the Inspectors section) change accordingly. This is particularly helpful for when you are in the Selection Matrix and need to tweak the styles of similar objects (for example, changing the font size for all of your labels at once or adding a drop shadow to certain objects).

Within that list, you can drag objects into different ordering or from one layer to another.

In the General preferences, you can choose to display the object ID numbers along with the items in List View, which can be useful for scripting.

To start working in the outline, just click an existing item, or double-click in an empty area to create a new item. While you work in the Outline Editor, the following keys can be used to create and arrange items:

• Return — creates a “peer” of the currently selected item. Peers appear on the same indentation level in the outline, and, if they are beyond the top level, have connections from the same parent object in the diagram.
• Tab — indents the currently selected item, making it a “child” of the item above it in the outline. A connection line is drawn in the diagram from the parent object to the child object.
• Shift-Tab — outdents the currently selected item, making it a peer of what used to be its parent.
• Escape (esc) — switches between selecting an item and editing the item’s text.

An item can be dragged around the outline view by its handle, the dot or triangle to the left of each item. Dragging an item with children brings its children along for the ride. While you drag an item, a black line shows the location and indentation level at which the item will be dropped when you let go of the mouse button.

A group, table, or subgraph on the canvas is shown as a single item in the outline, surrounded by brackets. Click the arrows on the right side of the item to see the objects inside and edit their text.

While the Outline Editor is handy for entering lots of information quickly, an outline can’t always perfectly represent the relationships in a complicated diagram. Objects with more than one parent, lines connected to other lines, and circular ancestry (“I’m my own grandpa!”) are all examples of the kinds of things a simple outline can’t properly show. In these cases, the Outline Editor tries its best to be accurate. If your diagram is not strictly tree-like, you probably shouldn’t rely too much on the Outline Editor if what you need is a quick representation of the objects’ relationships.

Along the top of the Selection Matrix is a row of buttons that look oddly familiar. No, they’re not the symbols you’d expect to see on a football coach’s chalkboard during halftime, these relate to the styles you can set for the objects on the Canvas.

All of these are on by default, and this gives you the finest level of granularity when evaluating your objects. But as you turn one—or all—of them off, you’ll notice that the previews in the Selection Matrix become more compact.

Click on a class of objects in the matrix to select them all for manipulation, or select them individually in the main view.

As you can see, the toolbar is packed with the controls you need to help you get your job done. From buttons to add new layers to a canvas—or an entirely new canvas—to the tools you need for drawing and connecting objects together.

On opposing ends of the toolbar you’ll find controls for hiding and showing the left and right sidebars. On the left is the Canvases and Contents sidebar, while on the right is the Inspectors sidebar which also includes the Stencils Library. Above those, you’ll find the standard OS X window controls for Closing, Hiding, and Expanding the window, and for popping into Full Screen mode.

At the center of the toolbar along the top, you’ll see a Document Icon which you might assume does nothing other than tell you what type of file this is. But if you hold down the Command key (⌘) and click that icon, you’ll get a contextual menu that shows you where the file is stored on your Mac. This is sometimes handy for when you’re working on duplicated files and you can’t remember where you saved the last revision. Next to that is the filename, and if your OmniGraffle file has more than one Canvas, the filename is appended by a colon (:) followed by the name of the canvas you’re presently working on.

Beneath the Document icon and filename are buttons that let you interact and control the behavior of the objects on the canvas. You can flip objects to the back or bring them to the front, lock them in place (which is really, really handy), and for grouping and ungrouping objects.

But the big tools are coming up next: the Style Well and the Tool Palette.

The very top item in the menu, Current Style, is the last style you set. Other sections you may see include:

• Canvas Styles, which is dependent upon the tool you have selected in the Tool Palette, shows related styles for that object type for everything on the canvas. For example, if you have selected the Line tool in the Tool Palette, the Canvas Styles section shows you the different styles for all of the lines you’ve drawn on your canvas.

  To use one of the Canvas Styles — First select one of the tools in the Tool Palette, and then click the Style Well and choose one of the available styles in the Canvas Styles section. The style you have selected now becomes the default style for that drawing tool.

• Favorite Styles, available with the upgrade to OmniGraffle Pro, is your personalized list of styles you intend to reuse from one project to another.

  To create a Favorite Style, Control-click an object on the canvas and select Add to Favorite Shape Styles from the contextual menu. To remove a style from the Favorite Styles list, select any object on the canvas, click on the Style Well icon in the toolbar, and then Control-click on the style you would like to remove and select Remove from Favorites from the contextual menu.

Selection Tool (Arrow)

Used for selecting objects on the Canvas.

Shape Tool

Used for drawing shapes, such as squares, rectangles, and circles.

Line Tool

Used for drawing lines between objects on the Canvas.

Text Tool

Used for entering text labels to a Line or for adding a random blob of text on the Canvas.

Pen Tool

Used for creating custom shapes.

Expando-Collapso

Click this button to expand the Tool Palette to reveal even more awesome tools…

Diagram

Used to rapidly create new objects on the canvas.

Style Brush

Used for copying the style of an object (including its shape, stroke, text style, and so on) so you can “paint” the style on other objects.

Rubber Stamp

Used for rapidly copying and pasting objects on the Canvas. To select a different object when the Rubber Stamp is in Persistent Tool mode, hold down the Option key and then click another object on the Canvas.

Magnet

Used to relocate the magnets that connect lines to objects.

Zoom Tool

Used to zoom in on the Canvas. When the Zoom Tool is in Persistent Tool mode, hold down the Option key and click on the canvas to zoom out.

Hand

Used to drag the canvas around.

See Using the Tools for in-depth coverage on each of the tools in the Tool Palette.

However, if you double-click on a tool, it becomes the permanently active tool until you switch to another tool. The tool button takes on a dark gray background to indicate that the tool is persistent.

You can change this behavior in the Drawing Tools preferences, so that tools are always (or never) activated persistently.

Similarly, you can press the number keys to activate tools. Each key from 1 to 0 corresponds to a tool in the palette, from left to right. (The only exceptions are the Hand and Action Browse Tool, which don’t have a number assigned; instead, use the Space Bar or b key, respectively.) Pressing a number key twice makes that particular tool persistent.

You can configure each tool’s Hot Key in the Drawing Tools preferences.

To customize the toolbar, choose View ▸ Customize Toolbar or Control-click on the toolbar and select Customize Toolbar. When you do, a sheet slides down from under the toolbar, revealing a slew of function-related buttons that you can drag up to the toolbar. For example, you could add the Make Table or Start Presentation buttons to the toolbar if you’ve purchased OmniGraffle 6 Professional.

If you don’t like the changes you’ve made, or if you ever want to reset the toolbar to it’s default state, all you need to do is drag the bottom row up to the toolbar. When you’ve finished making changes to the toolbar, click Done.

You’ll learn how to do all kinds of cool things, such as using Outline mode to quickly create and connect objects, and how to make effective use of the various inspectors. You’ll also learn how to use style chits to quickly replicate every style you’ve applied to an object to other objects, and how to create Bézier curves with text that conforms to the shape of the line. And best of all, we’ll walk you through all of these steps so you can master OmniGraffle in no time.

So hang on tight, grab your favorite beverage, put on some tunes in iTunes, and let’s get to work!

To get started, create a fresh document by selecting File ▸ Resource Browser (Shift-Command-N). In the Resource Browser’s sidebar under Templates, choose Imperial Units. In the list of Templates, choose the Auto-Resizing template, and then click New Diagram.

Your OmniGraffle window should look like this:

You’ll notice that the Canvas has grid lines showing. These can be helpful for when you need to lay out objects, such as if you’re laying out the furniture for your office or apartment. You won’t need these grid lines for this tutorial, so your next task is to turn them off. Follow these steps:

1. Open the Canvas inspector by choosing View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Canvas (Command-4).
2. Locate the Grid pane and open it by clicking the disclosure triangle on the left, if necessary.

   

3. Uncheck Snap to grid and Show grid lines; the grid lines are no longer visible.

   

This gives you a blank slate to work on, so let’s get started!

1. Use the keyboard shortcut, Option-Command–3, to switch to the Outline view. In the Contents section, click on where it says “Click to add a topic” to create your first object.

   

2. A Topic item appears in the outline, and an object labeled Topic appears on the canvas simultaneously.

   

3. The item’s text is already highlighted, so you can just start typing to rename it. This item represents our first character, so enter “Don John”.

   

4. Press Return to finish with this item and move on to the next one. A new item appears below the first one in the Outline view, and a new shape appears on the canvas; name this one “Don Pedro”.

5. Press Return once more to create a third item, and name it “Leonato”. Now you have three items in your outline and three shapes on your canvas.

   

1. The next two characters are soldiers who fought under Don Pedro’s command, so we’ll add them below him in the diagram. Click the Don Pedro item in the outline to select it, then press Return to create a new item below it. Name the new item “Benedick” and press the Tab key. Benedick is now indented beneath Don Pedro in the outline view. However…

   

2. …you’ll notice that rather than inserting an object labeled “Benedick” between Don Pedro and Leonato, that it doesn’t appear. Well, it is there, it’s just behind the Leonato object. Select “Leonato” and drag it down and to the right a little bit so you see Benedick.

   

3. With Benedick still selected, press Return to create another item at the same level and name it “Claudio”. Now you have two characters who belong to Don Pedro.

4. Now use the same technique to add Beatrice and Hero underneath Leonato (they’re his niece and daughter).

5. Adjust the diagram by dragging the Benedick, Claudio, Beatrice, and Hero objects so they appear beneath the three main characters, moving Leonato back up to the top line in the process. Your diagram should appear as follows:

   

1. Select the Text tool; it’s the one with a letter A on it. Then click it again so that it’ll stay active instead of reverting back to the selection tool after you use it.
2. Place the mouse pointer over the line between Don Pedro and Claudio so that the line glows and then click it to make a label appear. Type “boss” into the label’s text to show that Claudio works for Don Pedro.

   

3. Add labels to the three remaining lines in the same way, indicating that Don Pedro is also Benedick’s “boss”, and that Leonato is Hero’s “father” and Beatrice’s “uncle”.

   

1. Before you start connecting things together manually, it’s a good idea to turn off the automatic layout feature. Choose View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Canvas (Command–4), and then scroll down in the inspectors sidebar to the Diagram Layout section and make sure that Auto layout is unchecked.

   

2. So far, the lines we’ve drawn to connect the objects have been straight, so to be consistent, let’s make straight lines the default. To do this, first select the Line tool, and then open the Object inspector (View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Object, or Command–1). Scroll down in the inspector sidebar to the Lines section, and set the Line type to Straight.

   

3. To connect two shapes, just activate the Line tool, click on one shape and then click on another to create a line between them. Make connections and label them with the Text tool to signify the following relationships:

   • Don John and Don Pedro are half-brothers
   • Don Pedro and Leonato are friends
   • Benedick and Beatrice are (eventually) in love
   • Claudio and Hero are in love

   As you do this, feel free to use the Selection tool to move shapes into more comfortable locations.

   

In Tutorial 4, we introduced you to the Diagram Layout inspector, but now we’re going to start using the inspectors in earnest. They’re convenient and full of controls that you can use to modify any object on the canvas, or the canvas itself.

1. There are eight Object Inspectors (Fill, Stroke, Shadow, Shapes, Lines, Image, Geometry, and Alignment), each one of which controls a certain aspect of the selected objects’ appearance. The first inspector we’ll use is the Fill inspector; if you don’t see it on your screen, choose View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Object (Command–1).

2. Select Don John’s object on the canvas and then choose the Fill object inspector. You’ll notice that the object has a plain white fill color; let’s change that.

   

3. Click the Fill Color control on the right side of the Fill inspector (not on the little arrows). This pops open the Colors panel, which you can use to choose a new fill color. If you’d like, you can even choose a blend style using the Fill Type control on the left of the inspector.

   

4. Before moving on to the next step, let’s first change the unit of measurement used from Inches to Points. Choose View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Canvas (Command–4), and then scroll down in the inspectors sidebar to the Units section; change the Units popup from Inches to Points.

   

   The reason why you want to switch from Inches to Points is mostly pragmatic; it’s easier to think in terms of strokes or lines for this exercise in points than it is inches. If you were designing a map, however, you might opt to change the unit of measurement to miles or kilometers and then set an appropriate scale as well.

5. Now we’re going to use the Stroke and Shapes inspectors to change the line drawn around the outside of the object. Switch back to the Object inspector (Command–1).
   • In the Stroke inspector, change the thickness of the stroke to 2 pt.
   • In the Shapes inspector, change the radius to 5 pt.

     

     
     This makes for a nice, heavy, rounded stroke around the object. You can zoom in so you can see the progress you’ve made!

6. Switch to the Text inspector (View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Text, or Command–2), and in the Font section, choose a nice font, then click the color well next to the Font button and choose a color to contrast the fill. Now you should have one quite charming shape object.

   

With Don John still selected, look at the bottom of the main window for the style tray. It contains all of the style attributes for the currently selected object, each one represented by a little square “style chit”. Try dragging the “All Styles” chit (the isolated one on the far left of the style tray) and dropping it onto the Don Pedro shape in the diagram.

Whoa! That’s pretty easy. Do the same thing to Leonato so that all of the elder generation characters have a consistent appearance.

The Contents inspector lists all of the different kinds of objects on the canvas—lines, labels, rectangles—based on their styles. At the moment, it should show that you have one out of three colored rectangles selected. There should also be an item representing the four plain white rectangles with black strokes; click it to select all four objects at once, and it changes to show that you have selected all four of those objects.

You can use the Objects inspectors (View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Object, or Command–1) to change various aspects of an object that are not strictly related to its visual style. Let’s use the Geometry object inspector to change the size of the four selected objects. In the width and height fields, enter some new values to make these shapes somewhat larger than the others.

Use the Style inspectors to simultaneously style all four shapes in in a way that differentiates them from the others. Here we’ve chosen a different color, a slightly thicker stroke, and a larger font.

1. In the toolbar, click New Layer to add another one to the canvas. A new layer is born. You can name it if you like; something like “Background” should suffice.

   

2. The order of layers is important; stuff on higher layers appears in front of stuff on lower layers. We want the background to appear behind our relationships diagram, so drag the new layer and drop it below the other one in the list.

   

3. Let’s concentrate on the background layer. The layer you’re working with right now has a pencil icon to the left of its preview in the drawer. If the background layer doesn’t have the pencil icon, click just to the left of the layer preview to put it there.

   

4. For your background, rather than using the Background Image canvas inspector (Command–4), which would place a background image on the entire canvas, you’ll want to drag an image onto the layer. A new shape containing the image is created on the Background layer.

   

5. Use the controls in the Image object inspector (Command–1) to change the size and scaling or the opacity of the image to suit your liking.

   

Now you have an attractive, informative diagram. You know how to use the outline view to create objects, how to label and connect them, and how to add styles. You know how to propagate styles around to many objects. You know how to use multiple layers. At this point, you’re pretty much unstoppable!

Here we want the lines to help people visualize the relationships between the characters, and do to more than just show a simple connection. So let’s address the lines first, and then you’ll see how to remove the fill from a label.

1. Choose View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Object (Command–1) to open the Object Inspector on the right, and then open the Stroke and Lines object inspectors.

2. Select the line between Don John and Don Pedro.

3. In the Stroke inspector, set the stroke width to 1.5 pt, and change the line’s color to a nice shade of blue.

4. With the line still selected, go to the Lines inspector and give the line arrows at both the left and right sides. Your diagram and inspectors should look something like this:

   

5. Use a similar approach for the other lines, as follows:

   • Create a double-arrowed green line between Don Pedro and Leonato
   • Create single-arrowed red lines that point up from Claudio and Benedick to Don Pedro
   • Create single-arrowed purple lines that point up from Beatrice and Hero to Leonato
   • Create double-arrowed pink lines between Benedick and Beatrice, and between Claudio and Hero

   When you’ve finished, your diagram should look something like the following:

   

   Now let’s deal with the labels on the lines. As you can see, they have a white background that obscures the lines and blots out the background image. Let’s fix that!

6. To help speed this process up, let’s go back to our old friend, the Contents sidebar. Choose View ▸ Show Contents ▸ Selection Matrix (Option-Command–4). The Selection Matrix, if you recall from Tutorial # 7, lets you quickly select similar items in your diagram. In this case, we want to select all eight of the text labels, which you can do by clicking on the label chit.

   

7. Choose View ▸ Show Inspector ▸ Objects (Command–1) and set the Fill for the labels to No Fill. This removes the white box behind the labels so the lines and the background image show through.

   

   The only problem is that—with some of the labels—the text interferes with the lines. Let’s fix that.

8. Let’s start with the “love” labels. Select both of those by Command-clicking them, and then use the Geometry object inspector to change their positioning related to the line.

   

9. Select the “half-brothers” label and tap the Up Arrow key on your keyboard to nudge the label above the line.

10. Select the “friends” label and nudge that above the line using the Up Arrow key on your keyboard.

11. Use Command-click to select the two “boss”, “uncle”, and “father” labels.

12. In the Geometry object inspector, change their orientation relative to the line from Horizontal to Parallel.

    

13. Finally, select each of those four labels individually to move them off the lines. Your diagram should look similar to the following:

    

Use this as an opportunity to get acquainted with some of the other object inspectors that you might not have used so far. At the least, you’ll use the Type inspectors (Command–2) to change the Font, its size and style. You can also use the the Object inspectors (Command–1) to change the type’s appearance.

But now, now we’re going to show you something really cool: Adding text to a curved line. This is a new feature for OmniGraffle 6, and is something that many of you have asked for, so here goes…

1. Create a new layer by either clicking the New Layer button in the toolbar, or with Edit ▸ Layers ▸ New Layer).

2. Name the layer “Much Ado Quote”, and press Return to accept the name for the new layer. This new layer should be the active layer (as noted by the pencil on the left).

   

3. Next up, turn off Background layer by clicking its Eye icon to hide its visibility. This makes it easier for you to use the Line tool to draw your line.

4. In the toolbar, double-click the Line tool so that it remains active; the mouse pointer changes to a set of crosshairs.

5. Click the Style Well and select the Bézier, Stroke:Obsidian style.

   

6. Click somewhere beneath the diagram and create a curved line. The easiest way to do this is to click at a starting point of your choice, and then somewhere in the middle of where you want the line, click and drag; this creates a curve at the midpoint of your line. To end the line, double-click in another location on the canvas. Command-double–clicking terminates the line.

   If you haven’t worked with Bézier curves before, you can use the curve’s handles to change the shape of the curve. Drag the handles toward the center for a sharper curve, or further out to widen the arc. You can also drag the midpoint of the curve around to adjust the line’s positioning. To add another point to the curve, just click and drag anywhere on the line to add another Bézier point.

   

7. Next, add a label to the line you’ve just drawn. In the toolbar, select the Text tool and then click anywhere on the line.

   

8. Now, choose your favorite quote from Much Ado About Nothing and type that in as the label. For example, we’ll use this line from Beatrice: “Alas poor heart, if you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never love that which my friend hates.”

9. Next, use the Geometry object inspector to make it so the text follows the path of the line.

   

10. Depending on the length of the quote you use, you may notice that some of the text doesn’t appear. You’ll see a light blue bounding box that clips off a portion of the text. If you see this, try dragging the handles on the box so that all of your text appears on the line.

    You may need to play around with the top slider in the Geometry object inspector for adjusting the position of the label along the line. Moving this slider to the left moves the text toward the beginning of the line; moving the slider to the right moves the text toward the end.

11. Once all of your text is viewable along the path, go back to the Type inspector (Command–2) and change the Font from Helvetica to Zapfino. Reduce the type size and readjust the text box, if necessary, so that the entire quote shows up along the path.

12. Switch to the Object inspector and under Stroke, set the stroke’s width to 0 pt, and change the stroke style to No Stroke. This gives you an “invisible” path that you can add text to.

13. In the Fill inspector, set the label’s fill to No Fill. This clears out the white background, similar to the changes you made to the other labels earlier.

14. In the Canvases sidebar, go back to the Background layer and click on the Eye icon again to make the background layer visible.

In the end, your project should look similar to the following:

Take some time now to experiment with OmniGraffle a little more. The more you use OmniGraffle, the more comfortable you’ll become with all of its abilities. Don’t worry about “messing” anything up; just remember that you can always hit Command-Z to undo any recent changes you’ve made.

We’ve polished the interface and have integrated the sidebars, inspectors, and the Stencil Library so OmniGraffle works better on different screen sizes, especially in full screen mode, taking full advantage of your Retina display.

Some additional changes we’ve made include (but certainly aren’t limited to):

• OmniGraffle 6 offers a complete user interface redesign from the ground up.
• Easily find your latest projects, access stencils, templates, and any styles you may have saved with the new Resource Browser.
• OmniGraffle now runs in a Sandboxed environment, which means your resources, such as Templates and Stencils, can now be fully managed from within the app.
• Improved and powerful controls have been added to edit and mask images placed directly on the canvas.
• New artistic Fill and Stroke styles, such as Freehand, Stipple, and Marker.
• Combined shapes can now be uncombined into their starting component shapes.
• A new and powerful Font Inspector.
• Zoom levels have been increased to 6400 percent!
• The color and position of manual Guides can now be set by hand, and dragged from one canvas to another.
• View your Stencils using the new List Mode in the refined Stencils Library.
• Line labels can be set to follow the path of a line, including Bézier curves.

These new features, combined with file synchronization with OmniPresence and Omni Sync Server, make this an incredible update worthy of a whole number.