Build Killer Charts
Posted 03/31/2006 at 7:14pm
| by John Brandon and Niko Coucouvanis
Step 4: Chart by the Books
If you have a specific hierarchy or progression in mind for your chart, press the Utilities button and dig into the Outliner. With this method, you simply add your first Topic (click the plus sign) and use the Action menu (click the gear icon) to add topics designated Child, Sibling, Spouse, Aunt, and Parent (sorry, no kissin' cousins - and, yes, these wacky relationship terms mean pretty much what you'd expect). OmniGraffle adds the appropriate connectors automatically. You can still drag the topics and connectors around the window, but using Outline has a hidden bonus: Open the Canvas Inspector's Diagram Layout section (Shift-Command-L) and impose a structure on your chart (if you've nudged things around, this'll set them straight), or pick an entirely different layout. When you click Lay Out Now, OmniGraffle will snap your chart's items into perfect position.

You can go the other route and enforce strict parent-child relationships on your chartees.