Tips

Best Practices

Here are some of our best practices that will help you staying organized and efficient when building your diagrams:

1. Make use of the infinite canvas – You have all the space you need, so use it.
2. Use Keyboard shortcuts (F1) for productivity. Learn them from the beginning, and you will be able to add components and connections much faster. Here is the list.
3. Use Labels and Descriptions to identify your components. Once you export your diagram to Google Sheets, each component will be listed. It is up to you if they will be displayed as empty cells or have a meaningful name.
4. Use color schemes to format your Nodes. Colors can help to group mechanics or systems together. Pools and Registers mapped to the chart will also keep their colors. This makes it easier to identify the different graphs on your chart.
5. Use color-coded resources to keep resource flows separate. This is especially helpful if you want to keep track of where your resources are going.
6. Use Layers to organize your diagram. You can turn them on and off and even lock them, to prevent accidentally changing the systems within.
7. Align & Distribute Nodes (multiple selection > Properties > Arrange). – You can arrange your diagram components with the Alignment and Distribution tools in the properties panel.
8. Keep Grid & Guides on while building (Properties). This will help you to align your constructions automatically. When moving things around on the canvas, you will see blue guides that indicate and lines up to the position of the nearest component.
9. Try to keep a Vertical or Horizontal hierarchy of your systems. This will make it much easier for you and others to identify systems that belong together.
10. Group subsystems (select multiple Nodes > Right Click > Group). This way, you can collapse bigger constructs.
11. Use images to indicate important mechanics (Production points, traders, resources).
12. Use Text to describe important elements, but do not clutter your diagrams with unnecessary elements and text.
13. Name your predictions (good names vs. gobbledygook). This is especially helpful for tracking good and lousy batch play results and quickly comparing them.
14. Think about a Dashboard to visualize your KPIs. This will come in handy when you want to quickly map components on the chart.

1. Select a diagram Node, then DoubleClick / Alt+DoubleClick on a New Node in the Components sidebar to instantiate it on the diagram and automatically connect it via a Resource / State Connection.

2. Zoom in/out CTRL+Scroll

3. Drop Nodes on loose Resource Connections to auto-link

4. Use the Waypoints Presets to organise your diagrams

5. Add systems to My Library and use them later by drag&dropping them into any other diagram

6. Use Groups to declutter your diagram

7. Export Multiple Run data sets

8. Use Layers (View>Layers / Ctrl[Cmd]+Shift+L) for selecting & locking content

9. Use Outline (Ctrl[Cmd]+Shift+O) like a mini-map to navigate through larger diagrams

10. Duplicate/Delete with Connections