Introduction to the Canvas

The Toolbar at the top of the window contains buttons for OmniGraphSketcher’s four tools (Modify, Draw, Fill, and Text) and some common commands. You can add, remove, or rearrange buttons by choosing Customize Toolbar from the View menu. Show and hide the toolbar by clicking the white button in the upper-right corner of the window.

The Axes define the visible ranges of your data. There are several ways to customize the axes’ numerical ranges, appearance, and position.

The Margins are the area between the edge of your graph and the edge of the canvas. If you put the mouse pointer near the inside of the margin, a magenta guide appears; you can drag it to adjust the margin. Because the axes lie on that same line, you may need to go near the corner of the window to adjust these guides. You can also adjust the margins in the Canvas inspector.

The Axis Labels on the two axes, and the Tick Labels delineating values along the axes, can also be edited. Double-click a label to edit it. (You can edit a tick label at the edge of the graph to quickly adjust axis ranges.) Click a label and then use the Style inspector to change its appearance. You can also show or hide these labels with the Axes inspector.

As you draw or manipulate objects on the canvas, blue Guides apppear to help you arrange and align them. These guides correspond to the axis ticks, so you can adjust the ticks to make the guides more coarse or more precise. If you prefer not to have your drawing constrained by the guides, you can turn off the Snap to Grid setting in the Arrange menu.

The Status Bar at the bottom of the window gives contextual, possibly-interesting information.

If nothing is selected: the precise coordinates of the mouse pointer in the graph.

If nothing is selected and the mouse pointer is outside the canvas: the dimensions of the canvas in pixels and in inches (assuming 72 dots per inch).

If a single point is selected: the point’s coordinates.

If multiple points are selected: the points’ average coordinates.

If a two-point line is selected: The linear equation that describes the line.

If you click and drag the lower-right corner of the window to resize it, the canvas scales along with it. That is, a document is always exactly as big as its window, so there is no need to zoom or scroll. (If you just want to adjust the margins without changing the size of the graph, hold Command while you drag.) You can adjust the canvas size to particular pixel values with the Canvas inspector.