OmniGraffle 5: Making your Diagram Look Good

OmniGraffle 5 Diagramming Essentials

Create better diagrams with less effort using OmniGraffle

• Produce high-quality professional-looking diagrams that communicate information much better than words
• Makes diagramming fun and simple for Macintosh users
• Master the art of illustrating your ideas with OmniGraffle
• Learn to draw engaging charts and graphs to grasp your viewers’ attention to your presentations
• A hands-on guide filled with visual step-by-step examples that cover both the basics and the advanced features of OmniGraffle

      

We will start with a few tips on making your diagrams visually appealing:

• Colorize gently: Do not flush your diagram full of colors. It is best if you can keep to just a few colors. Use colors that match each other—if you feel that you are not good at choosing colors, you can use the ColorJack and Kuler websites.
• Use few fonts: Try to use only two different fonts. These fonts should be without serifs, also known as sans serif. The text you are reading right now is a serif font—the titles in this book are written without serifs.
• Consider your output media: The thickness of lines, the color (or lack there of) fill of shapes, and so on, means different things when used in a screen presentation, on a web page or in a printed report.
• Symmetry is better than asymmetry: A balanced diagram is a good-looking diagram. However, any educated graphics designer will tell you there is a difference between visual and mathematical symmetry. If you are unsure about this – just do what looks correct.
• Have one and only one focus point: The focus point is the most important part of the diagram.
• Use titles, figure captions and legends: A diagram without a title is not telling the reader exactly what they are looking at. The exception to this rule is if the diagram is part of a report or a book.
• Be liberal with white space: Avoid cramping shapes together, as this will make your diagram look busy and messy. If space permits – use a whole page exclusively for your diagram if needed.

Manually adjusting diagram elements

So far you have manually moved shapes around your diagram. You have also learned that you can use visual guides in your diagram to align elements. However, for the majority of tasks, you used the Smart Alignment Guides and the Smart Distance Guides found in the Arrange | Guides application menu.

Next, you see a shape that is aligned with both the Smart Alignment and Smart Distance guides enabled.

The thin blue lines going through My Shape in the previous diagram are a visual indication that the shape is aligned both to the shapes to the left and above. If you have a diagram with a lot of shapes close to each other, the Smart Alignment Guides may not seem so smart anymore. In fact, the guides will not align to whatever shapes you wish they should align to. In these circumstances, using manual guides is the only good solution for very precise shape alignments.

The Smart Alignment Guides will appear when you align two or more shapes to each other.

Between the shapes you see the visual measurements that appear when the Smart Distance Guides kicks into action. The guide shows that the distances between My Shape and the two other horizontal shapes are equal to each other—creating horizontal symmetry. The same is also true for the vertical distance guide.

The Smart Distance Guides appears when you try to distance three or more shapes from each other.

Resizing shapes

Until now you have resized shapes manually by dragging on the shape’s resize handles (the small squares found on each corner and on each edge).

If you wanted to make two or more shapes the same size, you’ve had to do a lot of work manually. Instead of manually working on each shape, you can use the Arrange | Size menu commands . You can also find the same commands using the context sensitive menu that appears if you right click on any shape, or selection of shapes.

There are all together five sizing commands available (Make Same Width, Make Same Height, Make Same Size, Make Natural Size, and Size to Fit Image). You can size shapes to the same height, the same width, the same width and height, to their natural size and finally you can resize a shape to fit an imported image.

Size to Fit Image

Executing this menu command will resize the shape to cover the length and height of an associated image.

Make Natural Size

A natural sized shape is a shape where the height and the width of the shape are the same.

The resizing is done based on the longest length, either vertically or horizontally. If you resize a shape which is wider than it’s tall—then the Natural Size is calculated based on the width of the shape. The same applies if the shape is taller than it’s wide—the Natural Size, in this case, is based on the height of the shape.

The shape is always resized from the center line (either vertically or horizontally).

Let’s learn by doing.

Start with a new canvas – add a rectangle to the canvas, and place a manual guideline through the shape’s horizontal center line.

After either using the Arrange | Size | Make Natural Size menu command , or right clicking and using the Size | Make Natural Size menu command , the shape is resized into a perfect square where each side has the same length and width.

As you can see, the horizontal center is still intact.

Making shapes the same size

You have at your disposal three resizing commands that can only be used if you have selected more than one shape. The commands are to make the shapes the same width, height, and both width and height at the same time.

We cannot stress this enough, but the order in which you select the shapes affects the end result.

1. Start by creating an OmniGraffle document with an ellipse, a rectangle, and a triangle.

   

2. First select the ellipse and then select the rectangle.
3. Issue the Make Same Width menu command.
4. The result is an oblong the same length as the ellipse.

   

5. Now – first select the triangle, and then select the rectangle.
6. Issue the Make Same Height menu command.

The result is that the rectangle is now the same height as the triangle, as seen in the screenshot below:

Let’s try to select all the shapes and then use the Make Same Size menu command.

You can select all the shapes by using the ⌘+A keyboard shortcut command.

If you got the following result, this is because the rectangle and triangle where already selected (remember that the order in which the shapes are selected matters).

If you instead had deselected any shapes prior to using the keyboard shortcut, the result would have been as expected because the ellipse was the fi rst shape you drew on the canvas.

To complicate matters even further, as you drew the ellipse first, this shape was the top-most shape in your diagram.

If you add a new cloud-shape to the right of the triangle, and order this shape to be the uppermost shape using the Front function () on the Canvas toolbar , your diagram should now look as shown next:

Now, hit ⌘+A to select all shapes on the canvas, and then issue the Make Same Size menu command.

The following screenshot is the resulting diagram:

Gridlines

So far you have worked without using a visible grid on your canvas. With the aid of the Smart Alignment Guides and the Smart Distance Guides, you have made perfectly aligned and good-looking diagrams. If your diagrams are much like the ones you have created so far, you may never have to use a grid when placing shapes.

However, if you are making diagrams, which represent “real life objects” – using a grid is a must. These kinds of diagrams can be anything from a diagram showing the new office layout – to a diagram for showing offi ce visitors where various parts of the building are.

Enabling gridlines

You turn the visibility of grid lines on or off by using the View | Gridlines menu command. You could also use the ⌘+ keyboard shortcut command.

In the previous screenshot, you see the canvas with grid lines. The thick grid lines are called the Major Gridlines, while the thinner lines are called the Minor Steps.

Adjusting gridlines

You can control the measurement unit in the Major Grid Spacing input field using the Canvas Size Property inspector.

The default spacing for the Major Gridlines is 2,54 cm / 1 inch. Between Major Gridlines, there are eight Minor Steps as default.

You can adjust the Major Gridlines and the Minor Steps by using the Grid Property inspector found in the Canvas selector.