Visual Thought User's Guide
[TOC] [Prev] [Next] [Index]

Appendix A

Tips and Techniques

 This chapter presents tips and techniques for making your use of Visual Thought even more efficient.

This chapter is divided into the following categories:

Dialogs, Windows and Menus

 The Visual Thought Main window has 8 menus; you can open them using the standard click-and-drag method. These menus pop up if you right-click over any Visual Thought window.

There is a quick way to iconify and de-iconify Visual Thought windows:

 Most text fields have a white background. Such text fields are editable. Text fields with a gray background are not editable.

In Visual Thought, sliders always have numeric fields above them. You can move the slider or enter an exact value, whichever you want to do.

File Choosers

Double-click on a filename or a directory to open it.

Press the Spacebar inside the file chooser to do filename completion.

The Open button opens a document.

All documents saved by Visual Thought automatically get a .vthought suffix added. Test1 therefore is saved as Test1.vthought.

All Palettes saved by Visual Thought automatically get a .vpalette suffix added. Basic2 therefore is saved as Basic2.vpalette.

Drawing Tools

A different tool is highlighted when you press each number.

Select

Text

Connect

Shape

Pan

Zoom

Key
Accelerator

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

Icon






Once you are in the Shape tool, you get a new shape each time you click the button.

The size of the last shape created by the Shape tool becomes the new default size.

The Connection tool gives you two ways to create connections between shapes: either click-and-drag from the first shape to the second, releasing the mouse button when you are above the second shape, or click-and-release on the first shape, move to the second, and click-and-release again. These actions create a rubberbanding connection between the two shapes.

In Select mode, you can constrain the movement of objects to horizontal or vertical lines by pressing the Ctrl key at any time. For example, to move an object so it lies on the same horizontal line as another, move the object so it coincides with the other object, then press the Ctrl key, and move the object away. Now the dragged object is guaranteed to lie on the same horizontal or vertical line as the stationary object.

In Select mode, you can resize an object while retaining its aspect ratio by pressing Ctrl while dragging one of its resize handles.

Selection

You can select objects by their type. Using the Selection dialog, you can select exactly the specific object types you need: you can select all rounded rectangles and circles in your diagram, for example, using only a couple of keystrokes.

Double-click on the chosen shape in the Selection dialog also selects that particular shape.

Ctrl-A selects all objects in a diagram. This is a very useful accelerator. For example, Select All (Ctrl-A) then press the Delete key to delete all objects in your document.

Ctrl-click toggles a selection; it selects whatever was not selected and deselects whatever was selected.

Shift-click extends a selection; if one object is selected, hold the shift key down and click on a second object. Both are now selected.

Click in an empty portion of a View to deselect all selected objects.

Connections

You can only curve connections that have at least 3 joints.

Free connections can be connected to objects later on; to do so, simply drag the end of one connection over the top of an object. The connection will attach to the object.

Cut, Copy, and Paste

Duplicating an object or set of objects is the same as first copying them, then pasting them; the duplicated objects are copied first to the Clipboard.

Visual Thought has a "smart" pasting feature, which allows you to select an object, paste it, move the second object and then paste again. The third pasted object will be placed exactly as far away and exactly in the same direction from the second as the second was from the first.

Visual Thought remembers the offset between the duplicated object and the duplicate object, and applies that offset for future pasting operations.

When pasting multiple selected objects, the real power of "smart" pasting appears-selecting multiple objects, duplicating them, moving the duplicate set, and pasting a third or fourth copy of the set.

Inspector

The Inspector allows you to examine and edit any objects that are selected.

The Inspector acts as a 5-in-1 dialog that ensures that any panel is at most 1 click away (or zero clicks by typing Ctrl-1 through 5 to switch panels). This feature speeds your editing.

Because it always appears in the upper-left corner of the screen, the Inspector becomes a constant. If you want to edit an object, you know instantly where to move.

"Stroked" is a PostScript term that means the outline of an object.

You can use the Selection dialog in conjunction with the Inspector to select and edit objects by their type. You can alter the width of only the rectangles in a diagram, for example, or bold the text only in circle objects. The combination of the Selection dialog and Inspector is particularly useful when your drawing has a large number of objects in it, because you can avoid having to select objects individually.

Align and Spread

You can align and spread objects either by using the standard menu and key accelerators or by using the Align dialog.

Notice that the last four Align menu key accelerators are the Ctrl key and a number.

When spreading objects, Visual Thought calculates the distance between the two outermost selected objects. It then places all selected objects as far apart from each other as possible within that distance.

The Spread along Column menu item moves the vertical positions of objects until the vertical coordinates of their alignment points are equidistant. It does not move objects horizontally.

Visual Thought's spread function does not necessarily separate objects; objects may still overlap if the total distance between selected objects is not large enough.

Groups

 You can "freeze" the relative sizes and positions of objects by creating a group.

You can move, resize or rotate, duplicate, or delete a group more easily than separate multiple objects.

You can group multiple groups into a single group. This technique can provide you with a useful hierarchy of objects.

To add or edit text of an individual object within a group, simply double-click on the object.

You can create connections to individual objects within the group.

You cannot change the graphic attributes, shape attributes, or attachments, or resize any group members individually. You must ungroup the group first.

Undo and Redo

Notice how easily you can move back steps. Visual Thought provides 100 levels of Undo/Redo.

There are three ways to undo an action:

Text

 Simply double-click in an object to enter text.

You can also enter text using the Text tool. First, enter Text mode by clicking on the Text tool icon in the Tool Bar, or type 2. Notice that the cursor changes to an I-beam. Then,

 You can change the text properties of subranges of text if that is all you want. You can also change the properties of the entire text of multiple objects by selecting the objects first.

In Edit Mode

Tab and Ctrl-Tab move the Edit focus to the next or previous object.

Pressing the Ctrl key plus any of the four cursor arrows moves the Edit focus to the next object above, below, to the left, or right.

Pressing the Esc key sends you from Edit mode back to Select mode.

Connections without text showing in them are ignored for purposes of determining where the Edit focus moves, but all other objects are considered.

Double-click selects a word; triple-click selects an entire line.

Backspace deletes backwards. Delete deletes forward.

Views

You can create a new View of a new drawing with FileNew, or a new View of an existing drawing with WindowsNew Window.

You can have multiple views on your screen simultaneously. These views may be of different drawings, or you can have multiple views of the same drawing.

A quick way to create a second View with an overview of your document is to choose New Window from the Windows menu, resize the new View so it is small, and press Ctrl-'.

There is always at most a single focused View, which is the View window to which all Inspector, dialog, and menu actions apply. You can recognize the focused View by its black border.

The View rulers display white lines ("indicators") to help you position and resize objects. The indicators track your mouse pointer. Normally, each ruler displays a single indicator. When you move or resize objects, each ruler displays triple indicators that show the center and the extremities of the moved or resized objects.

The Zoom, Unzoom, Set Zoom, Fit In View commands appear on the menu at the bottom of each View window.

Zooming in and out does not affect the diagram itself; you are only changing your perspective of the diagram.

Once you have clicked on the Zoom tool,

Palettes

 Visual Thought comes with a set of predefined Palettes, useful for general drawing as well as specialized applications. To open one or more of them, choose the OptionsPalettes... menu item.

Palettes are designed to allow you to easily drag-and-drop objects.

You can also create your own Palettes and define and store your own objects in these Palettes. Create a new Palette by choosing FileNew Palette. To draw into it, switch it to View mode by clicking in the mode button in the Palette's lower-left corner.

In View mode, Palettes are used exactly like Views. This feature allows you to leverage what you know about Views. Anything you can do in a View, you can do in a Palette.

Like Views, Palettes can be resized, moved, opened or closed. You can change the zoom factor for each Palette (and save screen space) as well.

Many Palettes have their zoom setting at less than 100%. These settings allow you to fit the Palette on to your screen more easily.

You can drag-and-drop connected (and ungrouped) collections of objects. This is important when objects that are connected in certain ways have specific meaning. Connect 3 ovals with 3 connections, and put that on to a palette. You can now drag them as a group, even though they are not grouped.

To close or save palettes, switch to the View mode first, then close or save the palette as you would a View (e.g., Ctrl-W or FileClose).

You can also close a palette by using the window manager. For example, to close a Palette in Solaris with the OpenWindows window manager, right-click on the Title bar of the Palette to pop up the window manager menu, then select the Quit menu item.

Objects that are being dragged from Palettes sometimes change size as they are dragged in and out of Views and Palettes. That is because they are drawn at the zoom factor of the window they are dragged over.

Grids

 Grids can be visible or invisible. The visibility of a grid does not affect whether objects snap to it.

Grids can be turned on or off. When a grid is on, objects "snap" to the grid. Whether a grid is on or off does not affect the grid's visibility.

Objects can be "sized" to the grid. Shapes that are sized to the grid have their four corners snap to the closest grid points; connections that are sized have each vertex snap to the closest grid point.

Notice that the grid display is "live" as the spacing is changed with the slider in the Grid dialog. Visual Thought is a very "live" environment.

If the grid is on, pressing the arrow keys "nudges" any selected objects by one grid space. If the grid is off, pressing the arrow keys nudges selected objects by one pixel.

Attachments

File attachments can be attached to shapes or connections.

A file attachment can be any type of file, including a Visual Thought document, PostScript file, text file, sound or image file, or even an executable, such as a shell script.

Attaching Visual Thought documents to objects simulates a "hyperlink" facility. The Visual Thought Guided Tour on-line example (accessible through the OptionsExamples... menu item) is a good example of the use of this technique.

To record sounds in Visual Thought, you must have a microphone (with a working battery) attached to your machine.

Page Layout and Printing

Visual Thought does not require you to tell it which printers are available-it queries the system when you first open the Print dialog.

Use the Page Layout command to set the number of pages in a diagram.

Instead of printing directly, you can save the document as a PostScript file. This PostScript file is exactly the same as the output that would have gone to the printer; it is scaled, it has margins, and it has page breaks.

If you wish to save the document or part of the document for inclusion into other applications (such as document processors), export the document as Encapsulated PostScript instead, using the FileExport menu item.

Color Chooser

 Click in a specific spot on the color wheel to choose a color. Press OK or Apply to color the selected object with the chosen color.

If the color wheel is completely black or white (and you have a color screen), click roughly in the middle of the Light bar. Color will appear.


Visual Thought User's Guide
[TOC] [Prev] [Next] [Index]

webmaster@confluent.com
¨ 1997 Confluent, Inc. All rights reserved.