OmniGraffle 5 Diagramming Essentials

Ruben Olsen

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781849690768
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Architecture des systèmes

In Detail

If a picture is worth a thousand words, why settle for anything less? Creating good visualizations to substantiate your ideas is essential in today's corporate environment. Use OmniGraffle's remarkably powerful and flexible features to get your diagrams right. Although fun to use, it can get cumbersome to find out exactly how to get what you want.

This book will teach you how to make stunning diagrams without spending much time and energy. No matter if you have never used OmniGraffle, or if you are using it on a daily basis, this book will teach you how to get the most out of this splendid diagramming tool. It will first teach you the basics of the program and then extend your knowledge to a higher level.

The book will teach you to make eye-popping visuals using a lot of useful, step-by-step examples. It begins with covering concepts that beef up your basics of using OmniGraffle. The earlier chapters will teach you to prepare dazzling diagrams from scratch with the many stencils, shapes, and fonts that are included in OmniGraffle. As your understanding of OmniGraffle broadens, the book will go even deeper to explain the less understood features of the software. It also covers some handy time-saving techniques such as workspaces and keyboard shortcuts.

By the time you reach the end of this book, you will have mastered OmniGraffle to turn your ideas into diagrams.

The only book to teach you everything about the best diagramming software for the Macintosh

Approach

This is a very visual book with more than 750 illustrations and screenshots, never leaving any intermediate steps out from the tutorials. It contains precise tutorials that explain the various tools, how to use them, and the visual results. The examples used in the book are an excellent starting point for your own diagrams, both as ideas and as true diagrams - all the diagrams in the book can be downloaded for your own use.

Who this book is for

This book is written for both beginners and seasoned users of OmniGraffle. If you are new to the software, then this book will teach you everything you need to know to make stunning diagrams. For seasoned OmniGraffle users, this book contains a lot of tricks and techniques that will save their work and time.

OmniGraffle 5 Diagramming Essentials

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Table of Contents

OmniGraffle 5 Diagramming Essentials

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewers

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with OmniGraffle

What OmniGraffle is—and what it is not

What's in a name?

Setting up OmniGraffle before you start

The OmniGraffle workspace

The canvas

The toolbar

The inspector bar

The drawing area

The style tray

The inspector palettes

Selector and keyboard shortcuts

The stencils

Your first diagram

Step 1: Start with a blank canvas

Step 2: Add the first task

Step 3: Add task—writing article

Step 4: Connecting shapes

Step 5: Adding another workflow step: Done editing

Step 6: Moving a shape

Step 7: Adding the editor check

Step 8: Workflow step—publish on the front page

Step 9: Workflow step—publish on the front page

Step 10: Publishing!

Step 11: The icing on the cake—making your diagram spring into color

The Canvas Style Tray

More on moving shapes around the canvas

Saving diagrams

Exporting diagrams

Handy tips regarding inspectors

Tips and pitfalls—tips on how to make great visual diagrams

Tip 1: Do some planning before you start

Tip 2: Colorize gently

Tip 3: Use few fonts

Tip 4: Consider your output media

Tip 5: Symmetry is better than asymmetry

Tip 6: Have one, and only one, focus point

Tip 7: Apply the Golden Ratio to stand alone diagrams

Tip 8: Use titles, figure captions, and legends

Tip 9: Be liberal with white space

Tip 10: Be consistent

Summary

2. Stencils

Defining a stencil

The stencil library

Overview of the Stencils palette

Built-in stencils

Common stencils

Maps stencils

Organization charts stencils

Science stencils

Software stencils

Space planning stencils

Your first stencil-based diagram

A helping guide

The incoming cash flow

Adding expense buckets

External stencils

Omni Group downloads

Graffletopia

Commercial stencil sources

Importing MS Visio stencils and templates

Searching and importing stencils from Graffletopia

The manual method of importing any stencils

The automatic method of importing stencils from Graffletopia

Amending your income flow diagram

The details of the Stencils palette

Overview of the palette sections

The Stencil Library Controls

The Stencil View Mode buttons

The Stencil Action button

The Stencil Search function

The Stencil Folders pane

The Stencil Library

The Recent Stencils section

The Favorite Stencil section

The selected shapes Style Tray

Creating your own stencil

Creating stencils with cool graphics

The vector side of things

The legal side of using third party graphic files

Creating a stencil with fancy graphics

Using svg Detective to convert the SVG file

Using InkScape to convert the SVG file

Exporting your stencil

Importing Microsoft Visio Templates

Organizing stencils

Summary

3. Shapes, Building Blocks for Diagrams

Differences from other software

Compound shapes

Shape types

Adding a text caption to a shape

Drawing a copy of an existing shape

Favorite shapes and styles

Singular shapes lines

The Line Style inspector

Midpoints on lines

Line types

Bézier lines in detail

Line endings—tails and (arrow) heads

Reversing a line

Line Hops

Favorite line styles

Line labels revisited

Text shapes

Favorite text styles

Shape style properties

Shape stroke inspector and the color of a stroke

Fill color and fill type

Shadow type, color, and size

Text type (font), color, and size

Placing images inside shapes

Ordering shapes

Grouping shapes

Creating a group of shapes

Ungrouping a group of shapes

Resizing shape groups

Adjusting shapes with the Geometry property inspector

Line Label controls

The Rulers and Inspector Bar

The Shape Inspector Bar

The Text Inspector Bar

The Canvas rulers

Connecting shapes

Summary

4. More Tools for Editing Diagrams

The Expanded Canvas Toolbar

The floating Canvas Tool palette

Customizing the Canvas Toolbar

The Canvas Toolbar preferences

Keyboard shortcuts for the Can...

Table of contents

• OmniGraffle 5 Diagramming Essentials