Each View has its own grid settings.

• Grids can be visible or invisible. The visibility of a grid does not affect whether objects snap to it.
• Grid Snap 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 a grid that is turned on. 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.

• Click on the Grid icon in the Visual Thought Main window Hot Buttons bar.

  
  For further information on the Arrange menu and the Grid keyboard shortcuts, see the section entitled "Arrange Menu" on page 176.

  Like most Visual Thought functions, you can access grid functions in multiple ways. You can open and use the Grid dialog, you can use the Grid commands in the Arrange menu or you can use the keyboard accelerators.

Snap On? and Show Grid? are independent of each other; snap can be on when the grid is hidden or displayed. And the grid can be displayed regardless of whether snap is on or off.

• Click on the Show Grid? checkbox. The grid is displayed in the View window.

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

• Move the sliding bar beneath the Spacing field to change the grid setting.
• Change the grid spacing to approximately 1 inch. (You can enter the value 1 in the Spacing field and then press Return to get the exact spacing.)

• Create a circle in the View window. Move the circle around the diagram. Notice that it can only be located at certain points; the circle is moving along the grid points.

  
  Whether the grid is displayed or hidden is completely independent of whether snap is on or off.

• Click the Snap On? checkbox now so that it is not activated. Move the circle around. Notice that you can move it anywhere on the screen.
• Hold the Ctrl key down and move the circle again. Now you can only move the circle on the two horizontal and vertical lines passing through the point at which you pressed Ctrl. This is known as constrained moving.

• Press the Up arrow key a few times. Notice that the arrow keys nudge the object up by one grid space each time you press the key. To nudge an object by a single pixel, simply turn off the grid snap first.