I'm testing OmniGraffle Professional 4 to see if I want to buy it buy it. I have a Macbook Pro running Mac OS X 10.4.10. I'm a Visio user who wants an alternative to having to install a virtual machine and WinBlows just so I can edit Visio files.
So I'm comparing Omnigraffle to Visio.
The attached file is a network diagram drawn with Visio and imported into Omnigraffle. The big boxes with round corners are network devices. The smaller boxes inside the big boxes are interfaces. The interfaces have labels. I think your "Send Feedback" tool may have rewritten the text strings in the drawing, so it's hard to refer to a specific label, but here goes... In the drawing, there are three big boxes on the right side of the drawing, one on top of the other. In the center box of the three, there is an interface on the lower left side.
I can't select the text label in the interface. Clicking on it selects the interface box, not the text. In Visio, I'd solve this by going outside the box (to the left), clicking and holding the mouse button, dragging a selection box until it encloses what I want to select, and releasing the mouse button. In Omnigraffle, this doesn't work - as I drag the selection box, everything it *touches* is selected instead of everything it encloses.
So how do I change the interface label text?
Subject: [OG #207965] OmniGraffle Pro 4.2.1 (v129.15) Feedback
From: OmniGraffle Support <omnigraffle@omnigroup.com>
To: siemsen@UCAR.EDU
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:15:36 -0700 (PDT)Pete-
The interface labels are separate objects from the boxes that enclose them, and as it turns out the enclosing boxes are in front of the labels making it difficult to select the labels as you've discovered.
Three ways to get at the labels:
- You can go into the General preference pane in the preferences and check the box that allows you to click through objects with no fill.
- You can hold down the Option key while dragging a selection to only select objects fully enclosed by the drag, and then bring them to the front so you can edit the label.
- You can open up the utilities drawer and in the outline section just find the labels you want to edit and make the change there.
Hope that helps,
Joel Page
Product Manager, OmniGraffle
The Omni Group
Joel,
Since I wrote my first email, I discovered the first solution that you provided, and it got me past the problem.
I'm glad to hear about solution 2, as it solves what I thought was a show-stopper: how to easily selectively select :-) sets of things that are "inside" other things. I doubt that I would've discovered it myself. I had checked the section of the manual that explains "selection", and it doesn't mention that trick.
I hadn't learned about the Utility Drawer yet... how cool!
I missed a "distribute" feature, which I expected to find with the "align" feature. I thought it was missing but found it via "help". Visio and PowerPoint consider "align" and "distribute" to be closely related, hence found in the same menus.
I also have a minor problem with Visio XML support, which I'll use a lot. I can "Import" files just fine, but when it's time to write them I have to "Export" and manually type the file name. I can't just "Save" or "Save As". So it's up to me to type the file name correctly, or play with cut-and-paste. Irritating.
I'll let you know if I encounter more problems. Omnigraffle looks like it might provide the capabilities that I need. Thank you very much for the quick response!
-- Pete
Subject: [OG #207965] OmniGraffle Pro 4.2.1 (v129.15) Feedback< (license FSBAUDJJFTAGFPEPTBMKKAMIVMCBKVFUSBV)
From: OmniGraffle Support <omnigraffle@omnigroup.com>
To: siemsen@UCAR.EDU
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:37:33 -0700 (PDT)Pete-
You can always click on a file in the export dialog's list view to use that as a name, just like in Windows.
We open Visio files as "Untitled" because it proved too easy to accidentally destroy data and overwrite files when we kept the original name.
Joel Page
Product Manager, OmniGraffle
The Omni GroupBezier lines
When you draw a curved line with midpoints, you usually get a "curved" line. For metter control, you want a "Bezier" line, which red control lines around each midpoint. To make this so, in the line inspector, find the button that controls the line type. It's the button two buttons above the "Remove Midpoints" button. Set it to "Bezier".
Pete Siemsen