Omnigraffle shared layers not updating

Add a new canvas to the project, and it gets named Canvas 2. These names are just placeholders, and they await your thing-labeling skills to assign them names that make sense for the project in which you are working. For example, to change the name of Canvas 1 to something else, double-click on the Canvas Name to make the name editable, and then enter something logical, such as Project Workflow or My Diabolical Robot. The same theory applies to Layer Names; you'll want to change the names of individual layers so that each one denotes its purpose in the project.

For example, to change the name of Layer 1 , double-click on the Layer Name to make the name editable, and then enter something logical, such as Basic Shapes or Left Foot. And using a similar process, you can change the name of the shapes or objects on the layers of your project.

No longer are you stuck with a project full of Rectangle s; you can change those to Squares or Robot's Big Toe , if you'd like. If you enter a long name for something, as shown in the previous image, that's okay.

OmniGraffle truncates the name for display purposes only; however, the width of the sidebar is expandable. Click in the space between the sidebar and the canvas's vertical ruler, and then drag left or right as needed. Naming the canvases, layers, and objects helps you to quickly identify where things are in your project. OmniGraffle comes with a full complement of guides that you can use to perfectly align objects on the canvas.

There are Ruler Guides, Smart Alignment Guides, and Smart Distance Guides; however, only the Ruler Guides—the guides which you can drag onto the canvas from the left and top ruler bars—can be managed from the Sidebar.

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. You can also click the Action menu at the bottom of the Sidebar, and choose New Horizontal Guide or New Vertical Guide , depending on which one you need.

The Ruler Guides are bright pink by default, but you can change the color by clicking the popup menu to the right of each guide in the Sidebar. When you do, the Colors window appears, allowing you to change the color to anything you'd like. You can also change the guide colors using the Appearance preference pane. For more details, see Appearance , earlier in this guide. Okay, so you took our advice and you weren't shy about using Ruler Guides. You've used plenty of them But now you need to see what your masterpiece looks like without all of the guides in the way.

To hide the Ruler Guides, click one of the rulers, and to make them reappear, click the the rulers again. When you add a new canvas to a project, that canvas adopts the Ruler Guides of the previously selected canvas.

However, Ruler Guides can be canvas-independent; meaning, you can have different Ruler Guides on each canvas. Let's say that you've been working no a project with multiple canvases, each with multiple Ruler Guides.

You decide to copy a newly created shape to another canvas, and there's a Ruler Guide that you'd like to go along with it. Layers can now be toggled between a normal and a Shared layer. You can set the X and Y coordinates of a selected vertex point.

Combined shapes can now be uncombined into their component shapes. Compatibility: macOS Last but not least, OmniGraffle Pro License Key is a sufficient and useful design reinforcement that provides one of the best environments for producing beautiful diagrams. Your license key can be added any time during or after the day trial period. OmniGraffle Keygen is used for creating precise, beautiful graphics, website wireframes, family trees, the map of software classes and electrical system.

In June , we introduced an Omni Accounts login-based unlocking method for all of our latest applications. New purchases now automatically register your license to your account, and earlier purchases can be registered to an account for easier license management.

For example, when you're trying to rapidly prototype something and you want the flexibility to move things around to see how they look when you move or add things to the design. For example, let's say that you're working on toolbar button designs for a Mac app.

Toolbars, as you know, contain three circular window control buttons in the upper-left corner. The Make Artboard option wraps the selected objects in an artboard, and places that artboard layer at the bottom of the stack. If, while iterating on your design, you decide that you want to see how the toolbar looks without the window controls, you can just grab the artboard and move it off to the side.

If you plan to work with Artboards often, you should consider adding the New Artboard Layer button to OmniGraffle's toolbar. To do this, follow these steps:. If you ever decide that you no longer want the New Artboard Layer button in the toolbar, Control-click on the toolbar again, and then drag the New Artboard Layer button away from the toolbar. When you let go of the mouse button, it disappears in a poof. By default, the Artboard Tool draws a rectangular shape when used.

However, you can use the Shape inspector to change the shape of an Artboard Object before or after it has been added to an Artboard Layer; here's how:. If you decide that your project no longer needs an artboard, you can safely delete the artboard without deleting the objects that reside on other layers. If you select the artboard on the canvas, make sure that you select just the artboard, and not any of the objects on the layers above prior to pressing Delete.

If you delete something by accident, remember that you can always press Command-Z to undo that action. To help illustrate how to use artboards in your own projects, there are a couple approaches you can take. First, if you know the dimensions of the image assets you need, you can start by laying down your artboard first and then drawing on the layers above. The second approach is when you already have the art you need in OmniGraffle, and you want to add an artboard to define the export areas you need.

Let's say that you've started up your own private rocket company, MasterBlasters , and you're using OmniGraffle for all of your design needs—from designing your brand ID to prototyping your website and companion app for iOS. In the past, the process for doing this would be extremely tedious. You'd have different project files with different-sized assets, which meant there was a greater chance for failure when you split up everything that way—and who wants that when you're creating a rocket company?

However, to accomplish this feat, you'll only need two artboard objects. To get the larger graphic for the billboard, you'll repurpose the artboard object you create to define the web banner, and then change the Unit Scale in the Units inspector.

This is where the power of artboard layers and objects come into play. Let's get started! Holding down the Shift key while drawing a shape ensures that the height and width of the object are the same dimensions.

Option-click on the Shape inspector and set the Corner Radius to 8 pt :. In the Sidebar, double-click on the artboard's name currently, Rectangle , and change that to app-icon :. Notice how the Artboard Layer has a red highlight to its layer preview in the Sidebar. This makes it easy for you to quickly identify the artboards in your project.

Hold down the Option key, and then click and drag on the artboard to create a duplicate:. In the Sidebar, double-click on the duplicate artboard's name, and change that to web-banner :.

Option-click the Geometry inspector, and change the artboard's width to pixels:. Next, you'll want to align the artboards so that the app-icon artboard is centered on the web-banner artboard. Click on the canvas to bring that area into focus, and then press Command-A Select All to select both artboards. Option-click the Alignment inspector, and then press the following buttons:.

With the artboards in place, you can work on your design on the layers above. When you set up your OmniGraffle project, you layer it just like you normally would, with a background, the rocketship, and the text blocks you need for the web banner.

After choosing Export , you'll catch your first glimpse of OmniGraffle's new Export panel. If you look at the right side of the Export panel, you'll see the Export Preview , where you can page through the images as determined by their artboards. If you look at the Export Sizes area of the Export panel, you'll see that you can also specify variable export sizes:. In the Export Sizes area, click to add another export size.

When you click Export , the Save sheet flops down so you can choose a location on your Mac to save the files. When you export, the text you enter in the Export As field is used as the name for a folder to contain the images. When you click Save , OmniGraffle outputs the image files to the folder you have specified. In this case, four images are exported:. Depending on the needs of the Web and App Teams, you can either send them both sizes, or just the ones they need and then discard the others.

Now that you know what artboards look like and how they interact with objects on other layers, you can also add artboards to an existing OmniGraffle project. To help illustrate the point, let's use an example of a spaceship landing game. To start, the OmniGraffle project has three layers:. In the sidebar, name the artboard layer Portrait and the artboard itself portrait. Next, you need to create a Landscape version of the artboard, and for this, you'll employ a little trick.

Control-click on the Portrait artboard layer and choose Duplicate Layer from the contextual menu that appears:. Rename the duplicated artboard layer to Landscape , and rename the artboard to landscape , and then select the landscape artboard in the Sidebar. Option-click on the Geometry inspector, and change the dimensions of the landscape artboard to px wide by px high:.

After changing the dimensions of the landscape artboard, you'll notice that it needs to be repositioned:. Use the following to relocate the landscape artboard without moving the objects on the layers above:. Click-and-hold on the landscape artboard's center handle. This grabs the artboard so it can be moved.

When the landscape artboard is in place, let go of the mouse button and the Control key. In the center of the toolbar, you'll find OmniGraffle's Tool Palette. This chapter provides you with an overview of the Tools, including tips for quickly accessing the tool you need, when you need it. The Tool Palette contains all of the tools that you need to draw and interact with objects on the Canvas. The Tool Palette is divided into two sections, separated by an arrow which you can click to hide or show the Tools to the right.

When fully open, the Tool Palette contains the following tools:. And, as you discovered in Customizing the Tool Palette , you can reorganize the tools and their positions in the Tool Palette in the Drawing Tools preference pane. By default, clicking a tool once activates it for a single use; after that one use the Selection tool becomes active again. When you select a tool in the toolbar, the button takes on a light gray background to indicate that the tool is active.

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. Each of the Tools in the Tool Palette has a Hot Key which you can press to quickly activate the tool.

This makes it really easy for you to switch between tools while you're working on a project without having to actually click on the tool. Some of the tools also have a Hot Number , ranging in order from 1 to 0 from left to right in the Tool Palette; these work exactly like the Hot Keys.

With the mouse pointer hovering over the Canvas, you can quickly activate any tool in the Tool Palette by pressing a Hot Key or Number. For example, if you press and hold s or 2 , the Shape tool becomes available; just click on the Canvas and drag to create a shape. When you let go of the Hot Key or Number, the mouse pointer changes back to the Selection tool. If you double-tap a Tool's Hot Key or Number, that tool becomes persistent see Persistent Tool Activation and remains active until you switch to another tool.

Immediately to the left of the Tool Palette is the Style Well. The Style Well is part popup menu and part visual display of the shape, line, or text to be created when you have the Shape, Line, Text, Pen, or Artboard tool selected. The Style Well works in concert with the Object inspectors Fill, Stroke, Shadow, Shape, Line, Font, Text Position, and Geometry in defining the object properties for the shape or text you're about to draw on the canvas.

To use the Style Well, first select one of the aforementioned tools, and then click the Style Well button to open the menu:. The very top item in the menu, Current Style , is the last style you set with the selected tool. If you have OmniGraffle Pro, you can add styled objects, as well as styles shown in the Canvas Styles section of the popover, to the list of Favorite Styles. 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.

To add an item from the Canvas Styles section of the popover as a favorite, simply click-and-drag the item up to the Favorite Styles section. You can choose from one of the default object Favorite Styles so you can quickly get going with your project, or you can define the object properties first and use the Style Well's preview as a guide. The tools are an essential part of the way you work in OmniGraffle. From simple tasks, such as resizing or moving an object on the canvas, to complex operations, such as building an action-based prototype in OmniGraffle Pro, there's a tool for all your design needs.

This section provides you with a quick overview of all of the tools you'll find in the Tool Palette. When you select an object on the canvas, the inspector sidebar automatically switches to the Object inspectors tab.

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 selection 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 an object that's part of a group, table, or subgraph, click once to select the group as a whole, and then click again to select the individual objects within.

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. You can also select individual objects within a group, table, or subgraph in the Sidebar. Click the disclosure triangle next to view the contents of those items, and then click to select the desired object within. To move an object, use the Selection tool to click-and-drag the object to a new location.

To move an object horizontally or vertically, hold Shift as you drag. To rotate an object, Command-drag one of its selection handles; you can also hold Shift to restrict the rotation to degree increments.

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

Every object or group of objects on the canvas is surrounded by a bounding box , which defines its width and height. When selected, you'll notice that the bounding box has eight selection handles around the outside. You can click and drag the selection handles to resize an object. For more details about bounding boxes, see Bounding Box Basics , earlier in this guide. If you have Smart Guides enabled, they appear as you drag to help you size objects equally.

Dragging the middle table handles on the top and bottom add another row to the table; dragging the ones on either side adds another column:. Once you have created a shape, you can select it and change its attributes with the Object, Type, and Properties inspectors.

Use the Line tool to make logical connections between objects. Connected objects stay connected unless you disconnect them, no matter how much you move them around or change them. To draw a straight line, hold Shift while drawing the line. This restrains the line so that you can draw perfectly straight lines horizontally and vertically.

After clicking on the canvas to start drawing the line, if you hold Shift and then move the mouse pointer slightly up- or downward, the line snaps to a degree angle.

When two objects are connected by a line, the object at the source is considered the parent of the object at the destination. 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. Use the text tool to add a label to an object, to edit the label on an object, or to create a new shape with text inside. 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 macOS 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. Use this tool to create custom shapes, such as the duck shown earlier. 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. While creating a shape, you can press Delete to remove the last point you added. Use the Point Editor tool to expose and manipulate the vector points of lines drawn with the Line tool, or shapes drawn with the Pen Tool. Everything you draw and create in OmniGraffle is defined by a series of vector points. For example, the simplest thing you can draw in OmniGraffle—a straight line using the Line tool —has two points: a red one at its source and a green one at its destination.

After drawing a a line or a shape created with the Line or Pen tools, respectively, you can use the Point Editor tool to view and manipulate the path's vector points. The path's vector points appear as tiny blue diamonds along the path, while also hiding the selection handles of the object's bounding box. This makes it really easy for you to access the points that make up a shape and bend them to your will. Select a vector point and press Delete to remove the point from the object's path:.

If you have OmniGraffle Pro, you can use the Point Editor tool to view and manipulate the vector points of any shape you draw, including those you create with the Shape tool. Hold the Option key while dragging on a control handle to work with just one side of the curve at a time. You can also add the Shift key while dragging on a control handle to constrain the handle's angle of rotation to degree increments.

Use the Artboard Tool to add an artboard to your project. Artboards are placed beneath the layers you draw and create things on, and are used to define export regions in a project.

In a new project which only has one canvas with a single layer , if you select the Artboard Tool and then draw on that layer, OmniGraffle automatically creates the artboard layer and the artboard object. If your project has more than one canvas, Control-click on the canvas that you want to add the new artboard layer to. The Diagram tool is for rapidly creating new objects on the Canvas. 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:. 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. Click the styled object with the Style Brush to absorb its styles. After absorbing the styles, the arrows go away and the bristle end of the brush reflects the style it has absorbed.

To apply an absorbed style to another object, move the filled Style Brush over the object and then click on the object to apply the style. Once the brush contains a style, you can continue clicking other objects on the canvas to replace their styles as well. If you want to absorb the style of a different object, press the Option key and the absorption arrows return to the bristle end of the Style Brush to indicate that the brush can pick up a different style.

For example, if you only select Fill, you can apply a certain fill style to objects without affecting any of their other styles.

When you first select the Rubber Stamp tool, the stamp is empty, ready and waiting for you to click an object that you'd like to duplicate.

You'll know that the Rubber Stamp is empty by the empty upwards-pointing triangle in its base. After clicking to absorb an object, the triangle points downward and has a black fill. 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.

Magnets are special spots on a shape that attract connection lines. 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 where the shape is moved.

If you want to place magnets in very specific places on a shape, click the Magnet Tool and then click anywhere on the object. If an object has more than one magnet, Smart Guides will appear so you can align the magnets as well.

To learn more about the magnet presets and locations, see Changing the Way Objects Connect with the Connections Inspector. Use the Zoom tool to get a closer or more distant look at the Canvas. Click anywhere on the canvas to center on that point and double the zoom percentage. Option-click to zoom back out. Click and drag a box across the canvas to specify the area of your canvas that you would like to have zoomed into the window.

This is particularly helpful when you need to zoom in on an object when working with the Point Editor tool so you can zoom in on a particular vector point. If you Option-drag , the rectangle is centered on the spot where you start dragging.

This is particularly useful for when you need to focus on a single element on the canvas. While dragging, press and hold Shift to move the zoom selection area around instead of resizing it. You can always zoom to a specific percentage with the Zoom menu, just beneath the canvas. The Zoom menu displays your current zoom level, as well as options for zooming to pre-specified magnifications, or to fit the current selection in the window.

If your Mac has a Multi-Touch—capable trackpad, you can use it to change the zoom level using the pinch gesture. 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.

Use this tool to drag your view of the canvas around, to see part of the canvas that is out of sight. Use the Action Browse Tool to click interactive objects and invoke their assigned action.

Interactive objects are created by assigning actions using OmniGraffle Pro's Action inspector Command—2. Use of the Action Browse Tool can only be used on objects that have an action assigned. The way to tell if an object has an action assigned is to select the Action Browse Tool and then mouseover the objects on the canvas.

If an object doesn't have an action assigned, nothing happens. However, if the object does have an action assigned, the object's highlight slowly pulses, and an icon appears over the upper-right corner of the object to convey the type of action assigned.

To invoke the action, click on the object with the Action Browse Tool. You use the Inspectors to change the style attributes for the objects on the canvas, set the properties of the canvas itself, and to include document-specific metadata and define how the OmniGraffle file is saved. The Inspectors sidebar has four tabs along its top, used for categorizing the individual inspector panes based on their purpose:. To make it easy for you to access the inspectors you need, we have conveniently mapped the Inspector tabs to the following shortcuts:.

To open an inspector pane, 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 Fill inspector and close any other open inspectors, Option-click on the disclosure triangle. To open or close all of the inspectors, Shift-click on one of the disclosure triangles. You can configure OmniGraffle's preferences so that only the inspectors you need for working with the selected object are displayed in the sidebar.

However, you can also open the inspectors as a floating window, or as four floating palettes, one for each tab. The different ways of viewing the Inspectors are known as Workspaces , because they help define how you work in OmniGraffle. You can quickly switch between Workspaces from the Inspectors menu, or by using a keyboard shortcut:. If you are using a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or an Apple Wireless Keyboard with your Mac, you also need to press the fn key—located at the lower-left corner of your keyboard—along with the applicable function key.

The top section of the Inspectors menu indicates the currently selected inspector the one with the checkmark next to it , and the inspector type. The previous image shows that the inspectors are available in the Sidebar and that the Object inspector has been selected. The bottom section of the Inspectors menu separates the different inspector states by Workspaces. The floating inspector window looks just like the inspector sidebar, except it is no longer a sidebar. Use Command—1 through Command—4 to switch between the Object, Properties, Canvas, and Document inspector tabs, respectively.

Use Command—1 through Command—4 to switch between the Object, Properties, Canvas, and Document inspector palettes, respectively. To lock an inspector tab, double-click the inspector tab; the tab then receives a green lock icon. To unlock the inspector, double-click the tab again or click on another tab; for example, from a locked Object inspector tab to the Canvas inspector tab.

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.

When it comes to rotating objects, you have a couple options. First select the object and then go to the Geometry inspector. Click and spin the rotation dial and watch the object revolve around its center point.

After clicking the rotation dial, keep the mouse button held down while moving the pointer away from the control to gain more rotational precision. The use of Multi-Touch gestures requires a touch-enabled trackpad.

Select and touch an object with two fingers, and then rotate the fingers or pivot one around the other to rotate the object. Any color swatch in the Colors window can be dragged to an object on the canvas or to an inspector's color control.

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 Units inspector. You can, however, enter values in any unit type that is 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 enter unit values that are different from the Ruler Units specified in the Units inspector. I know I can shrink it down to fit a page, but I really want it to tile to a 2nd page within the same canvas. Should this be a feature request then? To allow shared layers the option to repeat per defined printed page? That's worth a feature request -- I was pretty certain that we already have something filed on this, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

Consider this filed anew. Do I need to do anything to make it a formal request? Post in a special forum or anything? Sending feedback to omnigraffle omnigroup. Thanks Joel! I love you guys! Thread Tools. All times are GMT The time now is AM.