Editing diagrams

Work with shapes, connectors, text, styles, pages, themes, auto layout, and templates in vsdx.app.

Editing requires a paid plan. In the free version, files open read-only. See Account and billing.

Start a drawing

Press ⌘N to create a new drawing. You can start from a Blank Drawing or pick one of the built-in templates (see Templates below). To work on an existing file, open it with ⌘O.

Undo and redo work as you'd expect: ⌘Z to undo, ⇧⌘Z to redo.

The shapes panel

The shapes panel on the left holds the shapes you can add. Built-in shapes include:

Basic flowchart shapes: Process, Decision, Start/End, Data, Document, Subprocess, Database, Manual Input, Preparation, On-page reference, Dynamic connector, and Note.
Swimlanes: Swimlane and Separator, for cross-functional diagrams.
Basic shapes: rectangle, circle, triangle, pentagon, hexagon, and arrows.

To add a shape, drag it from the shapes panel onto the canvas.

Select, move, resize, rotate

Click a shape to select it. Drag on an empty part of the canvas to box-select several shapes.
Drag a selected shape to move it.
Drag the selection handles to resize, or use the rotation handle to rotate.

Connectors

Connectors link shapes together. When you attach a connector to a shape, it glues to that shape. Move the shape and the connector follows, so your diagram stays connected while you rearrange it.

Use the Dynamic connector from the shapes panel to draw a connection, and drop its ends on the shapes you want to link.

Text and styles

Double-click a shape to type text into it. With a shape selected, the Home tab gives you:

Text and paragraph formatting: font, size, color, alignment.
Fill and line settings: color, weight, and line style.
Quick styles: one-click combinations of fill, line, and text that look good together.

Align, arrange, and group

Select several shapes, then use the Arrange tab to:

Align them along an edge or center.
Change their order with Bring to Front and Send to Back.
Group them so they move and resize as one unit, or ungroup them again.

A drawing can have multiple pages. The page tabs along the bottom of the window let you switch between pages, add a new page, rename a page, or delete one you no longer need. Pages are a good way to keep an overview and its detail diagrams in the same file.

Themes and variants

The Design tab has themes and variants. A theme changes the colors and fonts of the whole diagram at once; a variant offers alternative color combinations within the same theme. It's the fastest way to make a diagram match your company's look or simply look more polished.

Auto layout and beautify

Two one-click tools help tidy messy diagrams:

Auto layout rearranges shapes into a clean, readable structure. It runs locally on your Mac and works offline.
Beautify improves the visual style of the diagram in one step.

Both can be undone with ⌘Z if you don't like the result.

Light and dark mode

vsdx.app follows your Mac's light or dark appearance, so it's comfortable to work in at any time of day.

Templates

Templates give you a ready-made starting point. Categories include Flowchart, Cross-Functional, Organization, Network, Software, and Floor Plan. Built-in templates:

Template	Good for
Basic Flowchart	Simple processes and decision flows
Cross-Functional Flowchart	Processes across teams, using swimlanes
Expense Swimlanes	An example of an approval process with swimlanes
Order Process	An example of an order handling flow
Organization Chart	Teams and reporting lines
Basic Network Diagram	Simple network layouts
Software Architecture	System components and how they connect
Grouped Architecture	Architecture diagrams organized into groups
Blank Drawing	Starting from scratch

Prefer to describe it?

On a paid plan you can also describe a diagram in a sentence and have it generated for you. See AI diagrams.

Known limitations

Copy and paste works within a document, but not between different documents yet.
There is no real-time multi-person collaboration. Share files instead; see Export and share.

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