Re: Adjusting canvas size

[Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com>]

The paradigm is a little different (well maybe since I don't know how Visio works). You simply make you drawing without concern for canvas size and forma the page breaks as needed for printing.  You can take the same diagram and put all on a 3x5 card or spread it over a 100 8.5x11 sheets.

Unfortunately, the functions for controlling visibility and printing are spread about in the menu system.

You want to look at the Page Setup for Paper Size for printing, margins (added within the areas lined out by the page breaks you set with paper size), scale (changes how the page break grid is sized, but not the graphics themselves), and orientation.

In Diagram Properties are the Grid sizing and shape, and the Colors of Grid, Background, and Page Break colors. To hide the Page Breaks make them the same color as the background.

You also have Preferences you can set when new Dia are greated, and there is the Default TEmplate that is retrieved on startup Diagram1.dia.

Other helpful hints.

You can change default settings of the basic tools like Text, Line and so on by double clicking on them in the Toolbar/Window.

If you start creating shapes (can't do that in Visio) it is cranky but clearly people do it.  I won't try to explain that because I don't have much skill at it.

Enjoy,

Mike

On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 12:57 PM, <rhkramer gmail com> wrote:

Background: I'm new to Dia, but, from what I've seen so far, it looks like I
can use it for my current purpose--creating a (multi-page) state diagram.

I did use Visio quite a bit but that was 15+ years ago.

My current issue is trying to figure out how to (or if I need to) adjust the
canvas size--when my state diagram is done, I'd expect it to have a mostly
vertical orientation--something like 2 (8.5x11) pages wide (i.e., horizontal)
and 8 pages long (i.e., vertical).

The canvas I see when I start up Dia or start a new diagram is 5 pages wide
and 2 pages long.

How do I adjust the canvas?

I've tried looking at the Dia manual, and googling, (including the mail
archive), but so far haven't found anything.  (I may be using a poor choice of
searchwords--my typical search has been [Dia canvas size].)
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Michael E. Ross

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