Entity Ownership Chart Designer module guide

The chart designer is where an editor shapes an ownership chart after creating it. This guide covers selecting, adding and removing cards, layout, looks, presets, and undo. For creating a chart, choosing its records, and downloading it, see the ownership charts guide.

Opening the Designer

Open a chart and click Design. The designer draws the chart at full width under the same header as the chart page, with Charts, Viewer to return to the read-only page, and Rename, Copy, and Delete.

Only Editor access opens the designer. Editing needs a larger screen: on a narrow one, the designer shows the chart read-only and says so.

Lextree saves every change as you make it, as one step, so there is no Save button. Each change also refreshes the chart’s data from your records. A card’s text can therefore change after a move if the record behind it changed since the chart was drawn.

Choosing What a Change Applies To

The designer applies a change to whatever is selected, and how you select decides how far the change reaches. Click Select in the toolbar, or Change selection? at the top of any panel, to open the chooser:

• Everything sets the chart’s defaults. The change applies to every card or link without a narrower setting of its own.
• All cards, All links, and All notes set the default for one kind.
• All organization cards and All people cards set a look for one type of card. The look also applies to cards of that type added later.
• Where selects cards or links whose fields match conditions you set, the same way conditions work when a chart is created.
• Branches selects one or more cards and everything beneath each. A change at a branch holds for that branch as cards come and go.
• Specific is a search-and-tick list of what is on the chart. Clicking cards and links on the chart does the same thing, and the change applies to exactly those.

When the selected cards do not share a value, the panel shows Mixed. An option the selection cannot take is disabled, with the reason beneath it.

Adding and Removing Cards and Links

Add lists the records that are not on the chart. Organizations and people appear under Cards. Under Links appear the stakes whose two ends are both on the chart, because a link can only be added once both of its cards are there. Search, tick what you want, and click Add.

Add a note places a text note you can type into and move. Add the title places the chart’s name as a note above the first row.

Markers

A marker on the edge of a card means the card has stakes beyond the chart in that direction: owners above it or holdings beneath it. Click the marker to choose:

• Add n more brings in the directly connected records.
• Add everything beyond brings in the whole branch.
• Show in Add opens the Add list filtered to those records.

The Show markers switch in the strip at the bottom hides or shows markers. Lextree remembers your setting.

Removing

Remove takes the selected cards and links off the chart. Removing a card never touches the record, and it removes the links that depend on that card. Right-click a card for Remove from chart and Lay out its branch. Anything you remove comes back through Add or a marker.

Layout

Layout sets how the chart is arranged: the direction the tree grows, whether wide rows stack into columns, the gap between cards, whether long text wraps, and whether labels show. At chart level these are the chart’s settings. At a branch they hold for that branch.

Drag a card to move it, and the chart keeps the placement. Lay out the whole chart arranges everything afresh. Lay out its branch arranges one card’s branch and leaves the rest where it is. Both appear in the Layout panel and in the Checks list.

Text Layout, Shape, and Format

• Text layout sets which side of a card its labels sit on, for cards and link cards separately. Fields shown → Choose… opens the field chooser for that kind of card, where you pick which fields appear and which one is the card’s title.
• Shape sets the shape of the cards and of the link lines. A new chart draws every card as a rectangle, organization or person.
• Format sets colors, borders, and text for Cards, Link lines, and Link cards, grouped under Boxes and lines and Text. With a branch selected, Frame this branch draws a titled frame around it, and Remove the frame takes it away.

Under Everything, each panel ends with Rules in this chart. It lists the looks you have set for a type of card or a branch, and you can remove any of them there.

Presets

A preset is a saved look: the chart’s shapes, colors, and text settings, without its records or layout. Presets are shared across your account.

• Preset in the toolbar applies a preset to the chart as one step you can undo.
• Classic is built in, and every new chart starts with it.
• Save this look as a preset… keeps the current chart’s look under a name so other charts can use it.
• Manage presets… lists your presets. You can rename one, update it from the current chart, or delete it.

Undo, Redo, and the Checks List

Undo and Redo step back and forward through the changes made in the designer, and their tooltips name each step. The designer keeps the last fifty steps of a chart. Renaming a chart is not a step: the name changes at once and cannot be undone.

When the drawing engine has something to report, such as a card it could not place or text it had to cut, a Checks chip appears in the strip at the bottom. Open it to read each item. Clicking an item that names cards highlights them. The list ends with Lay out the whole chart and Lay out its branch, the two usual remedies.

Two editors can open the same chart’s designer, but not edit it at the same time. If someone else changed the chart since you opened it, Lextree refuses your next change and asks you to reload.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Click a card to pick it. Ctrl-click or Shift-click (Cmd-click on a Mac) to add a card to the pick or drop it from the pick. While you are not typing in a field, these keys work:

On a chart you can only view, the zoom keys, 0 for fit, the arrow keys, and Escape still work. The rest need the designer.

Keeping the Picture Current

The designer runs the same staleness check as the chart page, and runs it again after every step. When records on the chart have changed or been trashed since it was drawn, a message says so and a warning mark stays beside the chart’s name. Update data from that message offers the same two choices as on the chart page: refresh values and keep every card in place, or lay the whole chart out afresh. See when a chart is out of date for what the message counts.

A chart created through the API opens with no picture until it is regenerated. Choose Update data to draw it. When an integration changes the chart’s records, the undo tooltip names the change as someone else’s, as it would for a colleague.