NeoDraw User Manual

NeoDraw is a vector drawing application for creating figures for papers, slides, posters, and similar uses. It is the layout function of NeoFlow made into an independent application, and it does not include the functions that handle flow cytometry data (FCS files).

• Draw shapes and text: Place shapes such as lines, arrows, rectangles, circles (ellipses), polygons, Bezier curves, and block arrows, and text on the page, and format their colors, lines, and characters (Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 6).
• Select and arrange: Select, move, resize, rotate, reorder, flip, group, align, and distribute objects, with mouse operations and numeric input (Chapter 5).
• Work with images: Place images, change their resolution (dpi), crop them, and adjust brightness and white (Chapter 7).
• Process shapes: Convert shapes to Bezier curves, merge or split shapes, repair shapes in an imported PDF, and more (Chapter 8).
• Manage pages: One document can hold several layouts (pages). NeoDraw provides paper sizes, print scale, rulers, guides, and grid snapping (Chapter 9).
• Exchange data with other applications: Import PDF, Illustrator (.ai), PowerPoint (.pptx), SVG, and image files; export to PDF, Illustrator (.ai), PPTX, and PNG; and print. Copy and paste also exchanges data with other applications as vector data (Chapter 10 to Chapter 12).

For drawing, NeoDraw uses Metal on macOS and Direct3D 11 on Windows. Even with more than 100,000 objects in one layout, drawing and editing remain fast.

NeoDraw and NeoFlow run the layout function (drawing, editing, import, export, and printing) with the same program. Therefore, how shapes are drawn, how they are operated, and what is exported are the same in both applications. The document file format is also shared: you can open a document made in NeoFlow in NeoDraw, and open a NeoDraw document in NeoFlow (see 2.2.4).

The following functions exist only in NeoFlow and are not in NeoDraw.

Even if a document made in NeoFlow contains plots, NeoDraw has no function to display or edit plots, so in NeoDraw you edit only the drawing objects such as shapes, text, and images.

NeoDraw has "documents" instead of workspaces. A document can hold several layouts (pages). NeoDraw has one window per document, and several documents can be open at the same time (on both macOS and Windows). You can edit, save, and close each window separately.

• Text shown on the screen is enclosed in quotation marks and written exactly as displayed (for example, "Save As…").
• Keyboard shortcuts are written in macOS notation (⌘ = command, ⇧ = shift, ⌥ = option). On Windows, read ⌘ as Ctrl and ⌥ as Alt.
• For items with choices, the tables list all of the choices, and numeric values come with their range and default.
• The conditions under which a button or menu item cannot be used (when it is grayed out, or not shown at all) are also stated.
• This manual is written based on the macOS version. Where the behavior or display differs on Windows, a note in the following form is added right after that item.

Difference from the Windows version: …

The NeoDraw window consists of the following areas, from top to bottom.

For the structure of the menu bar, see 13.1. One window corresponds to one document, and several documents can be open at the same time.

You can choose "Use System Setting" (default), "Light", or "Dark" under "Appearance" in the View menu (see 13.1.5). With "Use System Setting", NeoDraw follows the OS appearance setting (dark mode on macOS; the app mode under "Settings ▸ Personalization ▸ Colors" on Windows), and follows immediately when the OS setting is switched.

In dark mode, the operating parts such as the toolbar, the layout tab bar, the rulers, the background around the page, floating panels, dialogs, and menus use a dark color scheme. In contrast, the drawing area of the page stays white, the same as the figures you export to PDF and PPTX. The selected appearance is kept for the next launch.

Difference from the Windows version: The dialogs for opening and saving files and the confirmation messages are standard OS screens, so they follow the OS appearance setting rather than the application's "Appearance".

When you launch NeoDraw, a new empty document opens as a layout window. However, when a file is passed at launch (for example, by double-clicking a document in Finder or Explorer, or by dropping a file onto the icon), no empty document is created and that file is opened instead.

On macOS, the application does not quit even when all windows are closed. Clicking the Dock icon opens a new empty document.

Difference from the Windows version: When the last window is closed, the application quits (if there are unsaved changes, a confirmation appears before closing; see 2.3).

Choose "File" ▸ "New Layout" (⌘N; Ctrl+N on Windows) to open a new empty document (one layout) in a new window. There is no item corresponding to NeoFlow's "New Workspace".

The title of a new document is numbered automatically as "Layout 1", "Layout 2", and so on; when you open or save a document, the title changes to its file name without the extension. The document in the current window is not touched. No confirmation appears even if it has unsaved changes (the current document simply stays as it is). The new window opens slightly to the lower right of the window you were using.

When you select a file, it opens as an independent document (2.1.3). For the differences between the extensions, see 2.2.4.

Difference from the Windows version: The Windows filters are "NeoDraw / NeoFlow Document (*.ndw;*.neo;*.faws)" and "All Files (*.*)". This allows older files without an extension to be opened. The macOS "Open…" narrows the choices by extension, so there is no All Files choice.

When you open a file with the menu "Open…", by double-clicking in Finder (Explorer on Windows), by dropping it onto the icon, or by dragging and dropping it onto a window, the destination is chosen in the following order.

1. If a reusable "completely empty document" exists (no unsaved changes and all layouts empty), it is used. The search order is first the frontmost window, then the first open document that meets the conditions.
2. If none exists, a new document (window) is created.
3. The name of the document is set to the opened file name without its extension, and then the file is loaded.

When loading finishes, that window is brought to the front. Even if you open a file that contains FCS data, such as a NeoFlow document, NeoDraw has no workspace window, so only the layout window is opened and you edit the layout part.

When a File Cannot Be Opened

If the contents of the file cannot be read (for example, the file is corrupted), a warning alert is shown and the file is not opened. This is the same for every way of opening: "Open…", the recent files list, double-clicking in Finder (Explorer on Windows), and dropping a file.

Difference from the Windows version: On Windows, the same text is shown in a standard OS message box (with a warning icon and an OK button).

This is File > "Recent Files" in the menu bar, a submenu immediately below "Open…".

A file is registered both when a document is opened and when it is saved successfully. The same path is not duplicated; it is moved to the top of the list.

Selecting "Clear List" deletes the stored history, after which the menu displays "No Recent Files."

"File not found"

This message appears when an item in Recent Files is selected but no file exists at the recorded path.

After the alert is closed, that path is removed from the Recent Files list and the menu is rebuilt. If the file exists, it opens normally.

When you double-click a document in Finder (Explorer on Windows), drop files onto the icon, or use "Open With", all the supplied paths are opened in sequence. In this case, the empty new window that is normally created automatically at launch is not created. However, files in a format that is imported into a layout, such as PDF, PPTX, and images, are not opened as a document; they are imported into the layout of the frontmost document (11.1.1).

The document types associated with NeoDraw on macOS are as follows.

Difference from the Windows version: On Windows, each app registers its own file associations every time it starts (under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, so administrator rights are not required). NeoDraw is the default app (the one launched by a double-click) for .ndw. NeoFlow is the default app for .neo / .faws, and NeoDraw is added to the "Open with" candidates. To open a .neo / .faws file in NeoDraw, use "Open…", drop it onto a window, or drop it onto the exe icon. A file dropped onto the exe icon is received as a launch argument and opened, just like a double-click.

This asymmetry ("Save" overwrites silently, "Save As…" always asks) is intentional. When you "Save" a .neo or .faws file opened in NeoDraw, that file is overwritten with its original extension. The default extension of "Save As…" is ndw.

Difference from the Windows version: The filters of the save dialog are "NeoDraw Document (*.ndw)" and "All Files (*.*)".

The default file name in the save panel is determined in the following order of priority.

".ndw" is appended to this to form the initial value. If you save after loading a PDF, the name of that PDF becomes the default as it is (priority 2). However, if you are already working on an opened document file, the name of that document takes precedence (priority 1).

The default folder in the save panel (shared with the various export panels) is determined in the following order of priority.

Existence is checked, and if the folder does not exist, the next candidate is used.

This is the warning (critical) alert shown when writing fails. It is common to all the saving paths, such as "Save", "Save As…", and "Save and Close".

When saving fails, the window is not closed and the application does not quit.

Difference from the Windows version: On Windows, the same text is shown in a standard OS message box (with an error icon and an OK button). It is the same for "Save", "Save As…", and "Save and Close".

The saved file is in JSON format. The file is written all at once (atomically), so a broken, half-written file is never left behind. Because the previously loaded contents are used as the base, items that this version of NeoDraw does not manage are also carried over without being lost.

What NeoDraw mainly saves is all the layouts (paper size, print scale, shapes, text, images, groups, and guides), the current layout, and the defaults of the text style (bold, italic, superscript/subscript).

Only when saving succeeds are the following updated: the record of the destination, clearing of the "unsaved changes" state, the document name (the saved file name without its extension), the window title, and registration in Recent Files. If exporting or writing fails, none of these updates are made.

Differences among .ndw, .neo, and .faws

NeoFlow can also open .ndw files (NeoFlow's "Open…", dropping onto a window, or dropping onto the Dock). The file type is actually determined not by the extension but by the content at the beginning of the file.

When a file is loaded, the saved layouts are restored.

After loading, the document is in the "no unsaved changes" state (because there are no unsaved changes right after loading). The name of the document and the window title are also updated to the opened file name (without the extension).

When you try to close a window with the red × button of the window (the × at the upper right on Windows), the window is closed without confirmation if there are no unsaved changes. If there are unsaved changes, a three-choice confirmation dialog appears.

Difference from the Windows version: The confirmation is a standard OS message box, and the buttons are "Yes" (save and close), "No" (close without saving), and "Cancel". While other windows are open, closing one window does not quit the application. When the last window is closed, the application also quits.

When you choose "Quit NeoDraw" (⌘Q) from the application menu, only the documents that have unsaved changes are subject to confirmation among all the open documents. If there are none, the application quits immediately. If there are, they are confirmed one by one.

During the confirmation, a document whose unsaved changes have been resolved in the meantime (for example, by saving in another window) is skipped.

Difference from the Windows version: To quit, use "Quit" at the end of the File menu (Alt+F4 closes the window). The confirmation is a standard OS message box ("Yes" = save and quit, "No" = quit without saving, "Cancel"). If you choose "Cancel" during the confirmation, quitting is canceled without closing any window.

At launch, NeoDraw checks the distribution site and notifies you if a newer NeoDraw than the one you are using has been published (it checks the latest NeoDraw version, which is published separately from NeoFlow). The "Check for Updates at Launch" setting is saved separately for NeoFlow and NeoDraw, so choosing "Don't show this again" in one does not stop the notification in the other.

The following message appears only when there is a new version. Nothing is shown if you are up to date.

Even if you check "Don't show this again", you can check at any time from the following menu items, and you can also turn the automatic check back on.

The check never holds up startup: when the network is unavailable or the distribution site is down, the app simply starts with nothing shown (there is no waiting). Only when you choose "Check for Updates" yourself does it report "Couldn't check for updates".

On a Mac on the campus network, macOS may ask a question such as "Allow “NeoFlow” to find devices on your local network?" ("NeoDraw" for NeoDraw). This appears because, when the app contacts the distribution site to check for updates, the site is reached on a server in the local (campus) network, so macOS asks for permission. Choose "Allow" if you want to use the update check. The question does not appear when you use the app on a network outside the campus (there the distribution site is reached at a public address). If you choose "Don't Allow", you can still start the app and edit as usual, but the update check will not work on the campus network (you can change this later in System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Local Network). Windows does not show this question.

The three arrow/line buttons (right arrow, line, left arrow) are arranged vertically in three rows, and each button shows a preview actually rendered using the current preset. Clicking the same button again does not turn the mode off; it simply re-enters the same mode. After drawing is completed, NeoFlow automatically returns to selection mode.

Shapes drawn by dragging (lines, arrows, rectangles, circles (ellipses), and parametric shapes) are drawn by dragging on the page. When you finish drawing, the new shape is selected, and the tool automatically returns to selection mode.

Without ⇧, lines and arrows can be drawn at any angle.

Polygons and Bezier curves are drawn not by dragging but by clicking the page in turn to place vertices (3.4 and 3.5).

1. Click one of the Right Arrow, Line, or Left Arrow buttons in the toolbar.
2. Drag on the page to draw.
3. After drawing is complete, NeoFlow automatically returns to selection mode.

The arrowhead shape and size use the preset selected from "▼" to the right of the arrow buttons (default: "Standard Small"). The line style uses the style selected from "▼" to the right of the Line button (default: "Solid Line").

There are six items, with a check mark on the current value. Each item icon is a preview of the actual arrowhead shape. Selecting one also updates the preview images on the two arrow buttons.

The first item is "Solid Line" (default), followed by five additional styles. Each item has an actual preview icon and a check mark on the current value. Selecting one also updates the preview on the Line button.

Dash patterns scale in proportion to the line width. Only when exporting to PPTX are they converted to standard PowerPoint dash styles; on screen, in PDF, and in SVG they are drawn by geometric segmentation. This line-style feature is an addition specific to NeoFlow.

Special case when lines or arrows are selected: Clicking a line or arrow button does not enter drawing mode; instead, it immediately converts the selected line/arrow type in place (line ⇄ arrow).

When you select a line or an arrow, handles appear at both end points. Dragging an end-point handle changes the direction and the length of the line without moving the end point you are not holding.

• If you hold ⇧ while dragging, the line is fixed to horizontal or vertical, according to its direction at the moment you grabbed it (whether it was closer to horizontal or to vertical).
• Even if the line has been rotated, the end point you are not holding keeps its position on the screen.

For the thickness, color, and line type of a line, see Chapter 6.

The main button displays the currently selected shape, and clicking it enters creation mode for that shape. Choosing a type from "▼" immediately switches to creation mode for that type. Regardless of which shape is selected, only this single button is highlighted.

Click the Shape button (or choose a type from "▼") and drag on the page to draw. After drawing, select the shape and use the yellow handles to adjust parameters specific to that shape, such as shaft thickness, arrowhead size, or corner radius. The adjustable parameters are shown in the following table.

Select a single polygon or Bezier curve, right-click, and choose "Edit Vertices" to enter edit mode. Because double-clicking is consistently used to enter text inside shapes, node editing is accessed from this context menu.

See 3.7.2 and 3.7.3 for operations in edit mode. In Bezier edit mode, double-clicking a node toggles it between Corner and Free (Smooth).

In edit mode, you can move the handles of vertices and control points by dragging them. If you move a vertex while holding ⇧, it is fixed on the horizontal or vertical line that passes through its starting position. When grid snapping is on, vertices also fit the grid step.

While editing a Bezier/polygon, right-clicking a node shows a dedicated menu in preference to the normal context menu.

Right-clicking a point on the curve other than a node displays a menu containing only the following item.

There is no dedicated text-creation button in the toolbar. Text is created as follows.

• While remaining in selection mode, double-click an empty area of the page → new text is created at that position.
• Double-click a shape such as a rectangle or ellipse → begins entering text inside the shape.

Double-click existing text to begin inline editing in place.

If you double-click a shape such as a rectangle or a circle (ellipse), you can type text inside the shape. You can also set formatting such as font, size, color, bold, italic, and alignment for the text inside a shape (Chapter 4, 4.2).

For text inside a shape, you can specify the position horizontally (left, center, right) and vertically (top, middle, bottom). A standalone text object has no vertical alignment, because the height of its box is determined by the amount of text.

Arrow keys while editing: while you edit text, ← → ↑ ↓ move the caret. The direction changes with the rotation of the text. In single-line text, all four keys move one character at a time.

For ordinary horizontal text (rotation 0°), ↑ moves one character to the right and ↓ one character to the left. For vertical text turned 90° to the left (−90°, such as text that reads upward), ↑ goes toward the end and ↓ toward the start.

In multi-line text (text that has two or more lines because of line breaks or wrapping), moving from line to line is added, and it follows how the text looks (the up key goes up, the right key goes right). The keys that move between lines are ↑ ↓ when the reading direction is close to horizontal (rotation within ±45°, or 135° or more away) and ← → when it is close to vertical. The other keys move one character at a time, as in the tables above. Exactly ±45° counts as horizontal, and exactly ±135° as upside down. "Previous line" and "next line" refer to the order of the text.

• Movements combined with ⌘ (Ctrl on Windows) or Option (Alt on Windows), such as by word, to the start or end of a line, or to the start or end of the document, stay as before.

Holding ⇧ while pressing extends the selection in the same direction.

When you select text, width handles appear at the four corners of the selection frame (text has no resize handles other than the width handles). Dragging a width handle left or right changes the width of the text box, and the text wraps. The height of the box is determined automatically according to the amount of text.

• Moving a left-side handle moves the left edge while keeping the right edge (for rotated text, it moves along the direction of the rotation).
• Text whose width you changed by hand has a fixed width. Newly created text has a width that is determined automatically by the amount of text.

To the right of the shape and font cell, the font size field (top) and the line width field (bottom) are stacked vertically. While an image is selected, the fields in 5.2.4 appear here instead.

The scope of font-size application depends on the situation.

• Editing text with a range selected → only that range.
• Editing text with only the insertion cursor → the entire text box.
• Not editing → all selected text.

The pull-down lists the presets as whole numbers (such as "12 pt"), with a check mark on the current value. The field itself shows one decimal place (12.0), and values not in the list (such as 13.5) can be typed directly into the field after clicking it and applied with Return. While you type, the field's border turns blue and a cursor is shown.

While editing text, the field shows the size of the text being edited (the selected range, or the next character to be typed when only the cursor is placed). If the sizes within the range differ, the displayed value does not change.

How the displayed value is decided (same for the font size field and the line width field)

• While an object is selected, the field shows that object's value. Changing the value in this state changes only the selected object — it does not affect the default. The change appears in the field immediately, without waiting for the selection to clear.
• When nothing is selected, it shows the default that will be used for the next object you create. Changing the value in this state changes that default itself, and the field updates on the spot to show it.
• Clearing the selection returns the field to the default (unchanged, unless you changed it while nothing was selected) rather than to the value of the object that was selected a moment ago.
• While a kind that has no line width or font size (text, image, and so on) is selected, changing the value affects neither the field's display nor the default.

Text fonts work in two steps: first choose which fonts this app uses, then pick one of them from the toolbar.

"Font Settings…" in the View menu opens a dialog listing the fonts installed on the OS. The fonts you check there appear in the toolbar's "Font:" pull-down. Each font name in the list is drawn in that font.

• The initial state is the same three fonts as before (mac: Arial / Hiragino Sans / Courier New; Windows: Arial / Yu Gothic UI / Courier New). If you never open this dialog, nothing about the display changes.
• Typing in "Filter by font name" narrows the list to fonts whose names contain that text (case-insensitive).
• "Select All", "Deselect All" and "Restore Defaults" act in bulk. While a filter is active, "Select All" and "Deselect All" apply only to the fonts currently listed ("Restore Defaults" always applies to all fonts).
• The number of selected fonts is shown as "N fonts selected". Enter means OK and Esc means Cancel.
• If you press OK without selecting anything, the default three fonts are restored so that you are never left unable to pick a font.
• Your selection is saved and restored on the next launch (mac: user defaults; Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\NeoFlow\enabled_fonts.txt).

Select a text object and choose a font from the "Font:" pull-down in toolbar row 2; the whole annotation changes font. The unit of application is the annotation (text box), the same as the "Monospace Font" toggle — you cannot change the font of part of a single text object.

• The pull-down always shows a real font name. Even text with no font specified is never shown as "Default" — you see the font it actually uses (Arial when proportional, Courier New when monospaced). There is no "Default" entry.
• To go back, simply choose that default font name (Arial, for example). The result looks exactly like text with no font specified.
• When several text objects are selected and their fonts differ, the pull-down shows the default font name. Choosing a font in that state applies it to all of the selected text.
• The pull-down is as wide as the "Block Shape" row above it, so long font names are truncated with "…". Hover over it and the tooltip shows the full name.

To the right of the font size and line width fields come horizontal alignment, vertical alignment, and formatting, in that order. Each appears only under the conditions in the table below.

Text annotations are not subject to vertical alignment because their box height is determined by their content. The four formatting options can each be turned on/off independently.

Underline: Right-click selected text and choose a line style from the "Underline" submenu. Five styles are available — Single, Double, Thick, Dotted, and Dashed — and "None" removes the underline. The current style is check-marked. Right-clicking with characters selected while editing applies it to just those characters; right-clicking a selected text object outside of editing applies it to the whole object. The line position and thickness come from the underline metrics of the font in use, so the spacing stays natural as you change font or size. Exporting to PPTX writes a real PowerPoint underline (line style included), which stays editable in PowerPoint.

These items are added when a text annotation is right-clicked, or when right-clicking while editing text inside a shape.

The title of the "Line Spacing…" panel changes according to the target range: "Line Spacing (Current Line Only)," "Line Spacing (Selected n Lines)," or "Line Spacing (Entire Text)."

The panel contains two radio options.

Changes are applied immediately each time the slider is moved. There is no concept of Cancel; the value is committed when the panel is closed.

Choosing "Replace with Standard Font" stops displaying the embedded font for the selected text and switches it to the default typeface (Arial or Courier New, depending on the monospace setting) for display and editing from then on. There is no way to switch it back to the original font (only Undo (Cmd+Z) can reverse this). See 11.2 for how embedded fonts are imported in the first place.

If you choose a font whose embedding is not permitted (disallowed by the font itself), the screen and printing still use that font. Only PDF export cannot embed it, so that text is exported as an image instead.

Text imported from PDF, PPTX or EMF keeps the font name claimed by the source. If that font is actually installed, it is used for display. If it is not installed, the default font is used as before. If the source embedded the font program itself, that takes precedence.

An embedded font is data for a single face — one weight and one slant. PDFs embed Regular and Bold as separate fonts, so when you apply bold or italic to imported text, the embedded font alone may not be able to express it. In that case, if a font with the same name as the one recorded at import time is installed on the system, that font is used with the requested style (for example, making text whose embedded font is Arial Bold italic shows it in the system's Arial Italic). Only when no font of that name is installed does it fall back to the default font (Courier New for monospace, Arial otherwise). Return to the embedded font's own style and the embedded glyph shapes are used again.

A PDF's /BaseFont holds the PostScript name, not the family name you see on screen. The trailing MT stands for Monotype (the foundry that supplies the typeface) and PS marks the PostScript-derived name; neither means a different typeface (TimesNewRomanPSMT is Times New Roman, ArialMT is Arial).

On import the name is converted to the family name before it is stored. Imported text therefore counts as the same font as everything else in the toolbar's "Font" pull-down, and exports to PPTX or SVG carry a name the receiving application recognizes. Bold and italic are taken out of the font name and kept as character styles (TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT becomes Times New Roman with bold on).

Matching absorbs the different ways PDFs spell font names.

Names written without word breaks, such as TimesNewRomanPSMT, are split into words before matching (this is how PowerPoint and Word write PDFs). Copying from PowerPoint on Windows puts an EMF on the clipboard instead; that path keeps the font name in the same way.

Font names that do not exist on this machine are deliberately left unresolved. Asking the OS for them would silently substitute some other font and change how previously imported documents look. Such text is shown in the default font.

The "↖" (selection mode) at the left end of toolbar row 2 is the basic mode for selecting and moving objects. When you finish drawing, the tool automatically returns to selection mode.

Where objects overlap, the object in front is selected. For the behavior when you click an object that belongs to a group, see 5.6.1.

A selected object shows a selection frame and handles. The size of the handles is constant on the screen regardless of the display magnification, and the area where you can grab a handle is about 5.5 pixels from its center.

If you drag a selected object, the whole selection (all the selected objects) moves together.

• At the start, nothing happens until you have moved about 3 pixels on the screen (to distinguish it from an operation that only clicks to select). At the moment the movement starts, one entry is added to the undo history.
• While ⇧ is held, only the axis with the larger movement remains, and the movement is fixed to horizontal or vertical.
• When grid snapping is on, the landing position fits the grid step. While ⌥ (Alt on Windows) is held, it is temporarily released (9.4.2).
• When "Show move distance" is on, the amount of movement is shown beside the cursor during the drag (9.4.3).

While an object is selected (and you are not editing text), you can move it with the arrow keys.

A pixel here is a unit of length on the page (it is not affected by the display magnification of the page).

In the "X" and "Y" numeric fields (in cm) in toolbar row 2, you can specify the position of the left edge and the top edge of the selection numerically. The numeric fields are shown only when something is selected (13.2.4).

Drag the handles of the selection frame to change the size.

• The minimum size is 4 pixels.
• Even for a rotated object, a correction is applied so that the side or corner that you are not holding does not move on the screen.
• Text has only the width handles (4.1.4), and lines and arrows have only the end-point handles (3.2.5).
• When you resize an image by dragging, and the "dpi lock" is on, the pixels are recreated to match the reference resolution when the resizing ends (7.2.1).
• During the drag, when the move distance display is on, the amount of change in size is shown.

In the following numeric fields in toolbar row 2, you can specify the size of the selection numerically (13.2.4).

Changing the size in the size fields does not change the thickness of lines.

When you select a group, a frame surrounding the whole group and its 8 handles appear. Dragging a handle scales all the members together.

• A ⇧+corner handle keeps the aspect ratio.
• The minimum size is 8 pixels.
• When you scale with the handles of the frame around the whole group, the thickness of lines also changes in proportion to the scale.

The rotation handle is shown outside the selection frame, on the extension of the object's direction (the table in 5.1.2). If you grab the handle and move it, the object rotates toward the direction of the mouse. The center of rotation is the center of the shape for rectangles, circles (ellipses), polygons, Bezier curves, and parametric shapes, and the base point (upper left) of the text for text.

• The rotation angle is in steps of 5 degrees.
• During rotation, the angle ("n°") is shown beside the cursor, and the angle field in the toolbar changes at the same time.
• When several objects are selected, all the selected objects rotate by the same angle.
• A group rotates as a single rigid body. Use the rotation handle of the whole group.

In the "Angle" numeric field in toolbar row 2 (its tooltip is "Rotation angle (degrees)"), you can specify the rotation angle numerically. This field is not shown when nothing is selected, or when the object was imported from a PDF (13.2.4).

• Group (⌘G): Select two or more objects and run the command to make them one group. If the condition is not met, the toolbar button appears dimmed (disabled).

Ungroup (⇧⌘U; ⌘U alone also works) ungroups a group in the selection if there is one. If there is no group, nothing happens. The "Ungroup" button on the toolbar can be used when the selection contains at least one object that belongs to a group.

• A group with only one member is not kept: when an object that arrives by import (PDF, PowerPoint, SVG, EMF, etc.) or paste was the only member of its group, the group is dissolved automatically as it is brought in. When you delete members of a group and only one is left, that group is also dissolved automatically (Undo restores the group as well).

For alignment and distribution, a group is treated as a single rigid entity using the rectangle that bounds the entire group.

• Clicking one member of a group selects the entire group, and a rectangular frame that bounds the whole group is shown.
• Hovering over the frame's line changes the cursor to the move cursor, and you can drag from there to move the whole group (the handles at the frame's corners and edge midpoints still resize as before, and handles take priority). Merely clicking the frame's line without dragging leaves the selection unchanged.
• Clicking an object inside the group while the group is selected leaves just that one object selected (focus within the group).
• When the whole group is selected, Shift-clicking a member selects two objects — the one that caused the group to be selected and the one you just clicked — putting you into focus-within-group.
• While focused within a group, Shift-click adds objects from the same group to the selection one at a time. Each added object keeps its own handles, so even once you have selected every member of the group the selection does not revert to the group as a whole.
• Shift-clicking an object that is already selected removes just that object from the selection (everything else stays selected). This works the same way inside a group and for ordinary multi-selections that are not grouped. Holding Shift and dragging moves the selected objects instead of removing anything.
• While focused within a group, a frame that bounds the focused range is also shown. Clicking that frame's line (without dragging) returns to selecting the entire group.

The alignment controls form a 3-column × 2-row grid (each cell 28×22), positioned to the right of the Search button.

The alignment reference is determined as follows.

• If Guide Bars are on and a guide on the relevant axis is active (red), the coordinate of that guide is used as the reference. In this case, the command works even with only one object selected.
• If alignment is not guide-based, the first object in selection order is used as the reference. In this case, at least two objects must be selected.

A group is treated as one rigid body, and its position is determined using the rectangle that bounds the entire group. Alignment is undoable.

Distribution controls are arranged in two vertical rows 8 pixels to the right of the alignment controls.

Distribution also treats groups as rigid bodies and uses the center of the rectangle bounding the entire group. If there are fewer than three targets, nothing happens.

You can delete the selected objects with the Delete key (Forward-Delete works the same way). With "Cut" (⌘X), you can also copy and then delete the selection (10.1). Deleting can be undone.

When there is nothing to undo, "↩ Undo" in the right-click menu cannot be chosen. In the same way, when there is nothing to redo, "↪ Redo" cannot be chosen. For a move or a transformation by dragging, the whole continuous operation becomes one undo step.

Changing the paper size, changing the print scale, and deleting and reordering layouts are also entered in the undo history. Moving a guide line is not subject to undo.

Difference from the Windows version: The shortcut for "Redo" is Ctrl+Y.

Press the "Search" button in toolbar row 2 to open the Object Search panel.

The tooltip is "Find objects of the same type, color, weight, and font — from the selection, or the whole layout if nothing is selected." The window heading is "Find Objects."

• When opened with nothing selected, the description is "List of all shape/text objects in the layout."
• When opened with a selection, the description is "List of objects in the selection, grouped by appearance."
• Objects that look the same are listed together on one row. Shapes and lines are grouped by line color, fill color, and line width; text by font and style, font size, text color, and background color; and images by pixel dimensions and resolution (dpi).
• Text rows are listed under a subheading for each combination of font and style (such as "Font: Arial Style: Bold"), and each row's "Ab" sample is drawn in that font and style. A style combines the weight and slant ("Regular," "Italic," "Bold," or "Bold Italic") with the character position ("Superscript" or "Subscript"), such as "Superscript" or "Bold Superscript," and styles are listed in the order normal, superscript, subscript. Text with no font specified is listed under the font it actually uses (the same name shown in the toolbar's "Font:" pull-down). To select only the text in a particular font and style, check the rows under that subheading and press "Select."
• Text that mixes several styles within one text object (for example, when only part of it is bold, or when only part is superscript as in "CD4⁺") is grouped by the combination of styles it contains (such as "Regular + Bold" or "Regular + Superscript") and listed after the single styles. Its sample draws "A" in the first style and "b" in the last (superscript and subscript are shown by drawing "b" smaller and raised or lowered). Spaces and line breaks are not counted when determining the style.
• When a font name is too long to fit, the font name is shortened with "…" and the style is always shown in full.
• Types are displayed as "Text," "Line," "Rectangle," "Polygon," "Bezier," "Ellipse," and "Image"; objects with no fill are shown as "None."
• The buttons are "Clear" and "Select" (Return is the default button).
• When there are many objects, only the list scrolls. The heading, the "Clear" and "Select" buttons, and the description stay fixed at the top of the panel and can always be pressed. The list height is capped at 60 % of the screen height (the Layout window height on Windows) minus the heading, so the whole panel fits on screen even on a small monitor (at least a few rows are always shown). When there are few objects and they fit within the cap, the whole list is shown without scrolling, as before.
• Clicking outside the panel closes it without applying the checked items to the selection (whatever you clicked still responds to the click). Clicking an empty area inside the panel does not close it.
• If "Select" is pressed without checking any item, "Please check at least one" is displayed.
• If there are no targets, either "There are no shape/text objects to search" or "Please select multiple shape/text objects first" is displayed.

Difference from the Windows version: A scroll bar appears at the right edge of the list. Scroll with the mouse wheel, by dragging the scroll bar thumb, or by clicking the bar (moves one page). Long row descriptions are shortened with "…" at the right edge of the row.

Two color bars are arranged vertically 8 pixels to the right of the distribution controls.

Clicking a bar opens the color picker below the button. The current color shown in the bar updates according to the selection; if no fill is set, it is displayed as transparent.

• A 44-color palette. The first cell is "Transparent."
• A "Recent Colors" row.
• An "HSB" tab (sliders: "Hue," "Saturation," "Brightness") and an "RGB" tab (sliders: "R," "G," "B").
  • Changes made with the sliders and number fields are applied to the selected object immediately (not yet confirmed).
  • "OK" confirms the color. If you press "OK" while a number you typed is still in a field (without pressing Enter), that value is confirmed too. The confirmed color is added to the front of "Recent Colors."
  • Closing with "Cancel" or by clicking outside the picker restores the color the object had before the adjustment.
  • Pressing the color button that opened the picker again keeps the color being adjusted.
  • If you change the selection while the picker is open and keep adjusting, the previously selected object returns to its color before the adjustment, and further adjustments go to the newly selected object.
  • Changing the color of selected objects does not change the default color for shapes drawn next (a color chosen while nothing is selected becomes the default).
  • Choosing a color automatically resets that object's transparency to 0% (opaque). Even for a semi-transparent object (one set with "Transparency…" from the right-click menu, or a semi-transparent shape imported from another app), the color you choose shows exactly as chosen. It takes effect while you are still dragging a slider, and "Transparency…" then shows 0%. Closing with "Cancel" or by clicking outside the picker, or undoing, brings the transparency back as well. Setting a fill to "Transparent" (none), or merely removing a gradient, is not choosing a color, so the transparency is left alone. Choosing a gradient, or choosing a color while editing text (applied when the edit is confirmed), resets the transparency to 0% in the same way.
• A "Gradient" tab (available only for the fill of fillable shapes, or the stroke of shapes that have a stroke). Switches between "None," "Linear," and "Radial," and adjusts the selected stop's color, position, and opacity with sliders. Clicking the preview bar adds a stop; the round markers move left/right by dragging, and dragging far downward deletes them (a minimum of 2 stops is enforced). Linear gradients have an angle slider; radial gradients have center position, aspect ratio, and radius sliders. "Reset Points" restores just the stops to the default two colors.
  • A "Recent:" row (up to 8 entries). Clicking one immediately loads that gradient and applies it live (unlike palette swatches, clicking does not close the panel).
  • The first time the "Gradient" tab is opened for an object that has no gradient yet, the most recently OK-confirmed gradient (or the default white-to-blue linear gradient, if none) is set automatically and previewed live right away.
  • "Recent Colors," "Recently Used Gradients," and "Last Gradient" all persist across app restarts.
• Eyedropper.
• "Cancel" button. Clicking it restores the original color and closes the picker.

For ordinary color cells, the tooltip is the color code; for the transparent cell, it is "None (transparent)."

The line thickness is specified in the "Line width (pt)" field (initial value 1.0) in toolbar row 2. How the value in the field is determined (the value of the selected object, or the default for the next object you create) is as explained in 4.2.1.

The line-width field includes a thickness preview on its left. The pull-down is also a list with thickness previews. When a line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse, polygon, or Bezier object is selected, its line width is shown in the field. As with the font size, values not in the list can also be typed directly into the field after clicking it.

Right-click an object and choose "Transparency…" (it can be used when something is selected).

"Transparency…": 0–100% slider. 0% = opaque, 100% = transparent. Changes are previewed live from the moment the dialog opens. Buttons: "OK" and "Cancel." The value shown first is the transparency as it actually looks: a semi-transparent shape imported from another app (one that carries separate fill and line opacities) shows 50% when it is 50% transparent. Merely opening the dialog, or returning to the same value, changes nothing; changing the value makes both the fill and the line that transparent. Note that choosing a color for an object (fill, line, text, or a gradient) automatically resets that object's transparency to 0%, so that the chosen color is always visible.

Right-click an object and choose "Gloss…" (it can be used when something is selected).

"Gloss…": Color picker, "Outline Size" 0–10 Pt, "Transparency" 0–100%

Select just one object, such as a shape, line, text, or image, and choose "Copy" (⌘C, or "Copy" in the right-click menu). When you then right-click another object, "Paste Format" appears in the object-specific section of the menu. Choosing it transfers only the appearance of the copied object to the objects selected by the right-click.

The destination can be one object or several. If you select several objects or a group and right-click one of them, the format is pasted to all the selected objects (right-clicking an unselected object selects just that object and makes it the target). Each paste is one Undo step (⌘Z), which restores all destinations at once. If nothing would change, nothing is done.

Which formatting is transferred depends on the kinds of the source and destination objects. Formatting that the destination cannot have is not transferred.

Position, size, rotation, contents such as text and vertices, groups, and shape features such as rounded corners do not change. Line spacing and paragraph spacing set for individual paragraphs are also kept.

Both width and height have a minimum of 8 pixels.

Images are always stored after conversion to PNG, while the original data and original pixel dimensions are also preserved. Therefore, dpi can be changed later and cropping can be undone.

Only imported images remain selected after import (unlike vector imports, which clear the selection).

Only while an image is selected, the font-size field is replaced by the following three controls.

While in cropping mode, Return (confirm) and Escape (cancel) take precedence over all other keyboard handling, and mouse input accepts only dragging of the handles.

In crop mode, an orange frame and eight handles appear around the image, and the part that will be removed by cropping is shaded in translucent black. Drag the handles to decide the range to keep, then press Return to confirm or Escape to cancel.

"Adjust Brightness…": Two sliders for the lower and upper bounds of the brightness range (each 0–1000). Defaults are lower 0 and upper 1000. The two handles cannot cross: the lower bound can move only up to upper−1, and the upper bound only down to lower+1.

"White Transparency…": Radio options "Make White Transparent" / "Make Transparent White" (default: "Make White Transparent"), plus a 0–1000 slider (default 1000 = threshold 255 = nothing becomes transparent). Depending on the mode, the slider label changes between "White detection threshold" and "White/gray level."

"Round Image Corners…": Radius (%) 0–100, default 0.

"Extract Text…": Extracts text strings from the image.

"Round Corners…": Radius (%) 0–100. 100% = half of the shorter side. The panel also shows information in the form "Radius: n.npx (100% = half of shorter side = n.npx)." (Shown when: When exactly one rectangle is selected)

"Round Corners (readjust)…": Same as above (Shown when: When exactly one Bezier object that was previously created as a rounded-corner shape is selected (only the label changes))

"Convert Rectangle/Circle to Bezier…": Converts rectangles and ellipses to Bezier curves. (Shown when: When the selection contains at least one rectangle or ellipse)

"Convert Polygon to Bezier…": Corner-threshold slider 90–179 degrees (default 150). Description: "Corners sharper than the threshold stay sharp; the rest are smoothly approximated." (Shown when: When the selection contains at least one polygon with two or more vertices)

"Merge Objects": Combines the shapes. (Shown when: When there are two or more overlapping closed vector objects)

"Decompose Object": Splits the shapes. (Shown when: Same as above)

If combining/splitting fails, an alert appears with either "Could not process while preserving the Bezier curve. Please check the intersection calculation." or "No contour found to convert"

"Convert to PNG…": Resolution 36–600 DPI; default 300 (Shown when: Shown only when the selection contains at least one vector object (rectangle, ellipse, polygon, Bezier, line, arrow, or text))

The "Repair Menu" in toolbar row 2 is a pop-up menu that gathers cleaning up overlapping shapes of an imported PDF, correcting images, merging and splitting shapes, and more.

Use the "Paper:" pull-down in toolbar row 1 (tooltip "Paper size") to switch among five choices. The initial selection is "A4 Portrait."

Base dimensions are computed at 96 dpi (A4: 210 mm = 8.268 in × 96 = 794; Letter: 8.5 in × 96 = 816).

Selecting "From Printer" reads the paper size and orientation set on the default printer and uses that size as this layout's paper. No dialog opens and nothing is printed. When the size matches A4 or Letter in either orientation, the pull-down also shows the matching item (for example "A4 Portrait"). For any other size (A3, a custom size registered on the printer, and so on), the pull-down keeps showing "From Printer" and the paper has the size that was read.

• On Windows the size is read from the print settings (paper and orientation) of the default printer. On the Mac it is the paper and orientation of the default printer that macOS reports as this app's paper setting.
• The result is saved in the layout as the actual paper size (internal units at 96 dpi). The printer's own settings are not saved, so the layout opens with the same paper on another computer or printer, and it does not change by itself when you switch printers. After changing the printer's settings, select "From Printer" again to read them again.
• If the paper setting cannot be read, for example because there is no default printer, a message is shown and the paper size is left unchanged.
• Documents made with "Free" in earlier versions (a 1100 × 850 work area) open at the same size. The paper field shows "From Printer" for them.

• File → "Page Setup…" also sets the paper. In the standard OS page setup panel (a dialog on Windows), choose the printer, the paper size (including custom sizes registered on the printer), and the orientation. Pressing OK makes that paper the paper of the current layout. Nothing changes if you cancel or if the paper is the same as the current one. The settings you chose are remembered until you quit the app, and they become the starting values the next time the panel opens and the source that "From Printer" reads.

Selecting a size switches the base paper dimensions, records the change in Undo history, saves it in the layout, reapplies the print scale, and then repositions the content. The paper size is stored per layout, so the pull-down follows the paper of whichever layout tab is selected.

This is the numeric field at the right edge of the layout tab bar, to the right of the zoom controls (width 50, right-aligned, initial value "100"). The tooltip is "Print scale (%): the physical paper size. Separate from the on-screen zoom."

• The entered value is clamped to 10–500% (default 100%).
• The displayed paper dimensions are determined by "base dimensions × 100 ÷ print scale." Thus, increasing the scale reduces the paper's internal dimensions, causing the same figure to print larger.
• An Undo entry is created only when the value actually changes.
• Changing the print scale also recalculates the ruler conversion to cm/inches.
• When loading a file, if the print scale uses an old fractional representation of 5 or less, it is normalized to "100 ÷ value" and then clamped to 10–500.

In selection mode, single-click and drag the right edge, bottom edge, or lower-right corner of the paper (within 12 pixels on either side of the edge) to change the print scale directly.

• An Undo entry is created only once at the start of the drag.
• The minimum reduced size is 0.5 times the base dimensions.
• The resulting print scale is calculated as "100 × base width ÷ new width," rounded to the nearest integer, and clamped to 10–500%.
• During dragging, the paper and annotations are redrawn. When the mouse button is released, the value is committed as the print scale and the entire view is redrawn.

There is always a 1 cm scrolling gutter outside the paper. Scrolling covers the region including this gutter rather than the paper alone, and the editing overlay also spans the entire gutter, so clicks and drags outside the paper are accepted.

The layout tab bar is right below the toolbar. It switches between the multiple layouts (pages) in one document with tabs. At its right end are the fields for the screen display (zoom) and the print scale (9.3.1 and 9.1.4).

Tooltips: a normal tab shows "Click to switch / double-click to rename / right-click for menu," and the "+" tab shows "New Layout." When there are many tabs, the bar wraps and becomes taller.

Double-click, or choose "Rename" from the context menu, to begin inline editing.

An input containing only whitespace is ignored and the original name is retained. The edit-field width is set between 60 and 200 according to the text length.

Click the "+" tab to add a new layout.

• Its name is "Layout N," where N is the smallest unused number.
• The paper size setting is inherited from the current layout.
• Screen zoom is preserved (unlike switching tabs, the view is not refit).

Use "Delete Layout" in the context menu. It appears only when there are two or more layouts. In the confirmation alert "Delete '<name>'?", press "OK" to delete or "Cancel" to abort. Deletion is recorded in Undo history and can be reversed with ⌘Z.

Dragging a tab reorders it left or right. While dragging, the grabbed tab itself follows the cursor horizontally (it does not move vertically), and the other tabs shift to show the insertion point. The new position is committed when you release. Selecting a tab (switching the displayed layout) is also committed on release, so you can grab and reorder a tab that is not currently selected without selecting it (a pure reorder leaves the selection unchanged). Reordering is recorded in Undo history and can be reversed with ⌘Z. Reordering by itself does not change the active layout's content or selection (and does not trigger a zoom refit).

No context menu is shown over the "+" tab.

At the right edge of the layout tab bar are the label "On-screen display:", an editable numeric field, "%", and then "−", a slider, and "+".

The actual configurable zoom range is 5–2920%.

Whether the wheel zooms is controlled by "Zoom with Scroll" in the View menu. It is off by default, and then the wheel scrolls vertically even while the cursor is over the paper. Turning it on makes the wheel zoom in and out around the cursor position, but only over the paper. The setting is kept for the next launch. Zooming itself remains available while it is off, through pinch, the zoom % field, the "−" and "+" buttons, and the slider.

"Outside the paper" is not only the margin around the paper (the gutter) and the gray desk. Anywhere in the window — the rulers, the layout tabs, the toolbar, the menu row at the top, and the window's own margins — the wheel scrolls the layout vertically. Even at a position that visually overlaps the paper (such as under the ruler while you are scrolled down), the wheel scrolls as long as the cursor is outside the area that shows the paper.

While the cursor is outside the window (over another application), the OS hands the wheel to that application, so NeoDraw does not scroll.

Difference from the Windows version: On Windows the wheel also scrolls vertically over the window's title bar and menu bar. On the Mac the title bar belongs to the OS, so nothing happens there.

There are 20pt rulers along the top and left edges of the Layout Editor. A small decorative corner box appears at their upper-left intersection; it is not interactive.

• The origin is the upper-left corner of the paper.
• Major-tick spacing is selected from a 1 → 2 → 5 progression so that major ticks are at least 48 pixels apart on screen. Minor ticks divide a major interval into four parts when the leading digit of the major interval is 2, and into five parts otherwise.
• Major ticks have numeric labels (unnecessary trailing zeros are omitted).
• Display units are switched using "Ruler Units" in the View menu.

This setting is retained the next time the application is launched. When changed, the rulers in all open layouts are immediately redrawn via a notification. The cm conversion used for guide-line labels is exactly the same as the ruler conversion.

Turn Guide Bars on/off using "Guide bar" in the View menu. The item is disabled when no Layout window is open.

• When Guide Bars are enabled for the first time, if their positions have not been set, the vertical guide is initialized at half the paper width and the horizontal guide at half the paper height. Both are initially inactive (normal color).
• Line width is 1.5 pixels. The normal color is green (rgba(76,190,110,.7)); the active color is red (rgba(240,110,110,.85)).
• A label "n.nncm" is shown beside each guide (9px, white rounded-pill background, dark green text).

Guide-line operations

Whether a guide is active is independent of visibility and determines only its color and whether it is a snap target for alignment. When a guide on an axis is active, alignment commands align even a single selected object to that guide coordinate (normally two or more objects are required).

The Guide Bars toggle was previously in the object context menu, but has now been moved to the View menu.

Choose the grid spacing from the "Snap to Grid" submenu in the View menu. The tooltip is "Constrains movement to the grid step. Hold Option while dragging to bypass it temporarily."

• The value rounded is the destination position, not the movement amount. Therefore, once an object lands on the grid, subsequent moves occur in exact grid increments.
• Hold Option while dragging to disable snapping temporarily.
• This setting is retained the next time the application is launched (unset = off).

Turn this on/off with "Show move distance" in the View menu. The tooltip is "When on, the drag distance (length, X, Y) is shown next to the cursor."

• It applies to the currently active layout screen. Default: off.
• When enabled, the following three lines are displayed at the lower right of the cursor (position +12, −56) while dragging.

l: n cm
x: n cm
y: n cm

• Values use three significant digits and are converted to cm with the print scale taken into account.
• The menu item is disabled when no Layout window is open.
• Immediately before the menu opens, the check state is refreshed from the actual data.

The angle display ("n°") during rotation dragging uses the same display area but is unrelated to this toggle and is always shown.

The layout of NeoDraw has an internal clipboard, and it uses both this and the system clipboard. When you paste something that you copied inside NeoDraw (including another layout of the same document, or the document of another window), the contents of the internal clipboard are used as they are, and when you paste something that you copied in another application, it is imported from the system clipboard. There is only one internal clipboard for the whole application, so you can copy, paste, and cut across windows.

Running Copy performs the following steps in order.

1. Stores the selected objects in the internal clipboard as complete duplicates (including target data, selection state, and source layout).
2. Clears the remembered most-recent click position and resets the repeated-paste counter to 0.
3. Also writes to the system clipboard. The format written depends on the selection.

1. Records the clipboard state immediately after writing. This prevents NeoFlow from mistaking its own clipboard content for externally copied content and re-importing it at (0,0) on the page.

If ⌘C is pressed while editing text (inside a numeric field or rich-text field), it is handled as Copy within that input field.

Inside the Windows EMF, shapes are vectors and text is real text with its font name (including Japanese, non-default fonts and rotated text), so it stays sharp when zoomed and becomes editable text once you ungroup the picture in the target app. Text position, size and rotation direction match the screen. Only characters that no font contains (some emoji, for example) are embedded as images for that part.

A normal paste (Ctrl+V) in Word and PowerPoint picks the PNG (a 300 dpi image), not the EMF. To paste the EMF, use Paste Special (Ctrl+Alt+V) and choose "Picture (Enhanced Metafile)". When you ungroup the picture into text boxes in PowerPoint, Japanese text may sit slightly higher than Latin text (about 3 pt for 18 pt text) because of PowerPoint's own text layout; the pasted picture itself keeps the correct positions.

While editing text, the command is forwarded to Cut in the input field. Otherwise, NeoFlow performs Copy and then deletes the selection. The deletion is recorded in Undo history.

The paste position is the most recent position clicked or right-clicked on the page. If none exists, (40, 40) is used.

The pasted content is determined in the following order.

(1) If the internal clipboard exists and the system clipboard has not changed since NeoFlow's most recent Copy → Paste the internal clipboard contents at the click position.

(2) If the system clipboard has changed (for example, another application copied something) → Import from the system clipboard. This also pastes at the click position, just like (1): the imported content is placed so that the top-left of its bounding box lands on the click position (the same for PDF, SVG, images and EMF). Supported formats are prioritized as follows.

• If PDF is selected and parsing fails, NeoFlow does not fall back to an image.
• Only when PDF is not first in priority, if SVG format exists it is imported as SVG.
• Format availability is checked both in the clipboard's "first item" and across the entire clipboard.
• Text alignment from PowerPoint and other Office apps: When you copy shapes or text boxes in PowerPoint, Word or Excel, the clipboard carries a what-you-see PDF (EMF on Windows) together with Office's own shape data (DrawingML). The PDF/EMF only places each line at coordinates and has no notion of "centered" or "right-aligned", so NeoDraw takes the appearance (shapes, images, text positions, fonts) from the PDF/EMF and only the paragraph alignment from the Office shape data.
  • Single-line centered or right-aligned text keeps its alignment too (a PDF alone cannot tell how a single line was aligned).
  • When alignment is applied, the text box is widened to the same width as in PowerPoint while keeping the center (centered) or the right edge (right-aligned) in place. Text does not move on paste, and the alignment is kept when you later edit the text.
  • Text is matched by its content. If the same text appears several times with different alignments, NeoFlow does not guess and leaves it as is.
  • The Office shape data is not imported wholesale because theme picture fills, arrowhead sizes and similar details are reproduced less accurately than through the PDF.
• EMF size (Windows): An EMF is scaled using the dimensions of the reference device it was recorded with (its pixel count and physical size). Shapes and text copied from PowerPoint and similar apps are pasted at their original size (24pt text stays 24pt).
• PowerPoint lines and arrows: PowerPoint writes lines and arrows to PDF not as stroke (line-drawing) commands, but as a thin fill shaped like the line (with an added triangular fill for the arrowhead, if any). When this pattern is detected, NeoDraw imports it as a native "line" or "arrow" object instead of a filled shape. Once imported, the arrowhead style, line style, and width can be edited just like a line or arrow drawn with the line/arrow tool.

(3) If only plain text is available → Paste it as a new text object. Width is automatically fitted to the content; color, size, and left alignment use defaults; bold/italic/superscript/subscript inherit the default text style.

(4) If none of the above applies → Fall back to the internal clipboard contents.

The position for pasting from the internal clipboard is divided into the following three cases.

Pasted objects receive new IDs and new group IDs. Objects that belonged to the same group in the source remain together in the same newly assigned group after pasting. Immediately after pasting, the new objects are selected.

Duplicate creates copies of the selected objects with a small offset. The offset is learned as follows.

1. If objects created by the previous Duplicate were subsequently moved by the user, that movement amount is adopted as the spacing for the next Duplicate.
2. Immediately before duplication, the positions of the source objects are recorded.

Thus, "Duplicate → move to the desired position → Duplicate again" lets you arrange copies with the same spacing.

The Duplicate menu item is disabled while editing text.

Both commands are available from the Edit menu and from the "Special Copy" submenu when right-clicking an annotation.

Resolution for "Copy as PNG": The default is 300 dpi. Physical-resolution information is embedded in the PNG, so its physical size is preserved in the destination application.

When a single image is selected: the "Export" submenu shows one entry, "PNG (original resolution)," instead of the resolution list. The image is written out with exactly the pixels it already has — no upscaling or downscaling. When only vectors are selected, or vectors and images together, the original resolution is not uniquely defined, so the usual 72 / 144 / 300 / 600 dpi choices are shown as before.

External files can be imported in the following four ways.

• Drag and drop them onto the layout page.
• Choose files with File → "Place Files into Layout…" (⇧⌘O). The selectable extensions are pdf / ai / svg / pptx and raster images.
• Paste them from the clipboard (PDF, SVG, raster image).
• Drag and drop them onto the NeoDraw icon in the Dock (Mac version). The accepted formats are the same as "Place Files into Layout…": pdf / ai / svg / pptx / png / jpg / jpeg / gif / bmp / webp.
  • The files go into the layout of the document that is frontmost on screen.
  • If no document is open, or the app is not running, a new document is created and the files are imported into it.
  • Placement, and how multiple files and multi-page files are split into tabs, are the same as with "Place Files into Layout…".
  • Choosing NeoDraw with "Open With" in Finder imports the files in the same way. NeoDraw never becomes the default app for these formats (the app that opens them on double-click does not change).

Difference from the Windows version: Windows has no equivalent of the Dock, so importing by dropping onto the app icon is available only in the Mac version.

• The selection-panel title is "Select Files to Place into Layout." Multiple files can be selected, but folders cannot.
• Selectable extensions are pdf / png / jpeg / jpg / gif / bmp / svg / webp / pptx.
• If no Layout window is open, one is opened before the files are placed.
• The base placement position is (40, 40). If multiple files are selected, each subsequent file is offset by 18 pixels (PDF and PPTX are exceptions; see 11.2 and 11.3).

When you drop a file onto the page, its destination is sorted by the extension.

A PDF is converted to vectors one page at a time. NeoFlow first searches within the file for the actual PDF data (from %PDF through %%EOF), normalizes it, and then parses it.

Adobe Illustrator .ai files are imported through this same path. Since Illustrator 9 (2000), "Create PDF Compatible File" has been enabled by default, so a saved .ai is itself a PDF (it simply carries Illustrator's own editing data alongside it). Import therefore behaves exactly as the table below describes for PDF: Illustrator-specific structures such as layers and artboards are not used, and the file is expanded into the vector shapes exactly as they appear.

If no vector elements can be extracted, "No vector elements could be imported from the PDF" is displayed.

When a file cannot be imported, do what the message says: re-save it from Illustrator's "Save As" dialog with "Create PDF Compatible File" checked, or export it as a PDF first and import that PDF instead.

A compound path is imported as one shape whose holes are joined to the outline by a zero-width bridge. It fills exactly like the original, but if you edit its vertices after import you may see the bridge.

Spot colors (/Separation) and /DeviceN, both common in Illustrator artwork, are resolved by evaluating the tint transform function and then converting through the underlying color space (CMYK and so on) to RGB. CMYK, ICC-based, Lab, and indexed color are interpreted the same way. This applies not only to solid fills but to every color of a gradient.

When the file carries an embedded color profile (Illustrator artwork almost always does), the profile is interpreted and the colors are converted for display. Each kind of profile is handled as follows.

Treating the raw numbers as RGB without consulting the profile makes the same file look different from what Illustrator or Preview shows. With this conversion the import matches a color-managed display almost exactly.

Limitation: the blend mode itself (Multiply, Screen, and so on) cannot be held as a shape attribute, so apart from the "does not change the backdrop" case above, such fills are drawn with normal stacking. Only the areas that would blend into an intermediate color differ slightly from the original.

When a PDF or .ai file has the actual font program embedded (not just a reference to it), NeoFlow imports that font and displays the text in the original typeface. Editing (adding or deleting characters) also uses that same typeface.

Right-clicking text that uses an imported embedded font offers "Replace with Standard Font" (see 4.2.6). Choosing it switches that text to the default typeface for display and editing from then on.

If the same embedded font is used in multiple places, NeoFlow stores it once internally as long as the content is identical, so it does not inflate the file size.

Exponents and chemical-formula suffixes in a PDF (such as "10⁴", "CO₂" and "CD4⁺") are imported as superscript or subscript text. NeoFlow recognizes both of the ways a PDF can draw them.

• A superscript is a short string (up to 5 characters, not counting spaces) that follows the body characters directly, with no space, and whose position (baseline) is 0.2 to 0.8 times the body size higher. Its size may be the same as the body as long as it is at least half the body size.
• A subscript is a string at most 0.92 times the body size whose position is 0.1 to 0.5 times the body size lower. Characters that are merely lowered while staying the same size as the body are not made subscripts, because they cannot be told apart from the slight baseline jitter of ordinary characters on the same line.
• Characters separated by a space (the "0.05" in "P < 0.05"), characters placed before the body (as in "²H"), and strings longer than 5 characters are imported as separate words or separate texts, as before.
• The same characters drawn twice exactly on top of each other (at the same position, typeface, size and color, as seen in PDFs written by drawing programs) look identical, so they are merged into one. Characters that are offset slightly to look bolder are left as they are.

Slides are extracted from a PowerPoint file.

If parsing fails, "Could not parse the PowerPoint file" is displayed. If no elements can be extracted, "No vector elements could be imported from the PowerPoint file" is displayed.

SVG can be imported by drag and drop, "Place Files into Layout…", or pasting from the clipboard (when PDF is not present).

If no elements can be extracted, "No vector elements could be imported from the SVG" is displayed.

When an unreadable file is dropped or placed, an alert titled "Import" appears. Its body is one of the following, depending on the situation.

Open it with the "Export" button in toolbar row 1. When the button is pressed, any in-progress inline editing (text or axis titles) is committed. The dialog is an independent 640 × 560 window titled "Export."

Difference from the Windows version: Pressing the same "Export" button in the toolbar first opens a format-selection popup menu. It lists "Export PNG…", "Export PPTX (current layout)…", "Export PPTX (all layouts)…", "Export PDF (current layout)…", "Export PDF (all layouts)…", "Export Illustrator (current layout)…", and "Export Illustrator (all layouts)…", and, below a separator, "Batch Export PDF (Choose Layouts)…", "Batch Export PPTX (Choose Layouts)…", "Batch Export PNG (Choose Layouts)…", and "Batch Export Illustrator (Choose Layouts)…". Choosing a "Batch Export…" item opens a dialog, a separate one for each format, with the progress display, cancel, and multi-layout selection described in this section (the Mac version lets you switch the format within a single dialog). The layout list shows only a checkbox and a name, without thumbnails, and there is no "Select All" checkbox (the only layout checked by default is the current one). The "Resolution:" choice is not made in this dialog but in the "PDF point-cloud resolution" and "PNG resolution" submenus of the format-selection menu (the choice stays in effect until you change it). "Convert Ticks to Text (exponents as superscript)" and "Convert Gates to Shapes", near the end of the menu, are settings for plots and gates, and they do not affect what NeoDraw exports. The button reads "Export" rather than "Export", and before a run starts the "Cancel" button reads "Close". As on the Mac, the destination is asked for before the run.

• A "Select All" checkbox appears at the top.
• Below it is a scrolling list with one row per layout (checkbox + thumbnail + name).
• By default, only the currently active layout is checked.
• Clicking anywhere in a row toggles its checkbox.
• "Select All" is on only when every layout is checked (no intermediate state is used).
• A layout with an empty name is displayed as "Layout n."

The "Resolution" for PDF and Illustrator (.ai) is a setting for the images of plots. NeoDraw has no plots, so this setting does not affect what is exported (shapes and text are vector, and pasted images are embedded in their original quality). The resolution for PNG works as the resolution of the exported image.

• If you press "Export" without checking any layouts, the dialog remains open and displays "Please select a layout."
• All controls are disabled while export is running.
• If "Cancel" is pressed during execution, the status changes to "Canceling…".
• The progress area successively shows messages such as "Preparing…", "Rendering PNG…", "Compressing PNG…", "Saving PNG…", and "Saving PDF…".

The "base name" used for the default file name in the destination panel is the file name of the most recently opened/saved document. If there is no document yet, "flow_layout" is used (unlike the rule for the default name of the document save panel, the name of an imported PDF is not considered; see 2.2.2).

Description: "Exports all layouts to a single multi-page PDF. The resolution setting applies only to plot images (text/frames/ticks/gates remain vector)."

• The save-panel title is "Export PDF."
• The default file name is "<base name>.pdf".
• Text and shapes are exported as vectors. NeoDraw has no plots, so the resolution setting does not affect what is exported.
• Pasted images are embedded at their original quality. JPEG data is written through unchanged rather than re-compressed, so nothing is lost and the file stays smaller. When an image is rotated, the rotation is written as a PDF transformation matrix instead of being baked into the pixels, so edges stay sharp at any zoom level.
• If generation fails, "Failed to generate the PDF." is displayed.

Description: "Exports all layouts to a single multi-page Illustrator (.ai) file. Since it is PDF-compatible under the hood, it opens in Illustrator 9 or later. The resolution setting applies only to plot images (text/frames/ticks/gates remain vector)."

• The save-panel title is "Export Illustrator."
• The default file name is "<base name>.ai".
• The generated content is identical to a PDF export (the same structure Illustrator 9 and later produce by default with "Create PDF Compatible File" enabled — the .ai file is itself a PDF). Text and shapes are exported as vectors, and images are embedded at their original quality just as with PDF.
• If generation fails, "Failed to generate the Illustrator file." is displayed.

Pairs with import: This export is the counterpart of 11.2 Importing PDF and Illustrator (.ai). A NeoDraw-exported .ai file can, of course, be imported right back in.

Description: "Export all layouts as a single multi-slide PPTX (vector)."

• The save-panel title is "Export PPTX."
• The default file name is "<base name>.pptx".
• If generation fails, "Failed to generate the PPTX." is displayed.

Description: "Export each layout as a separate PNG (choose a save folder when multiple are selected)."

If generation fails, "Failed to generate the PNG." is displayed.

Difference from the Windows version: "Batch Export PNG (Choose Layouts)…" lets you export multiple checked layouts as individual PNG files. File names are "(layout name)_(dpi)dpi.png" (no base name prefix). File-name construction and the folder-vs-single-file behavior otherwise match the Mac version.

Select annotations and right-click to export only the selected area directly from the "Export" submenu.

In addition, when vectors are selected, "Convert to PNG…" lets you specify a resolution from 36 to 600 DPI (default 300) and replace the selected vector objects with a PNG image object.

Printing can be started from the following three entry points.

1. First, a sheet titled "Preparing to Print" appears. It contains the label "Preparing print data…", a progress bar, and a "Cancel" button. A PDF is generated in the background at this stage.
2. While generation is in progress, editing in the target Layout window is suspended.
3. Pressing "Cancel" changes the status to "Canceling…".
4. If generation fails, an alert "Failed to generate print data" appears.
5. When generation is complete, the document is passed to the standard macOS print panel. Both the print panel and the progress panel are displayed.

Difference from the Windows version: The "Preparing to Print" sheet does not appear. Instead, an in-app "Print Preview" window opens first and shows each sheet of paper exactly as it will be printed, drawn the same way as the printout. Move between pages with "Previous Page" and "Next Page" (← → / PageUp and PageDown / Home and End / the mouse wheel), and press "Print…" to continue to the OS print dialog. "Close" (Esc) does not print. The Windows 11 print dialog does not support previews for Win32 apps and shows "This app doesn't support print preview," so the app provides its own preview.

• The paper size is taken directly from the dimensions of the first page.
• All margins are 0, and horizontal/vertical centering is enabled.
• No scaling is performed (scale 1.0; no fit-to-page processing). Any overflowing content is clipped.
• Paper orientation is determined from the portrait/landscape orientation of the first page and is automatically rotated as necessary.
• Specify the page range to print using the "Pages" field in the standard macOS print panel.

The menu bar has five top-level menus: the application menu, File, Edit, View, and Window. The macOS version does not have a Help menu.

Difference from the Windows version: The Windows version has a "Help" menu containing "About NeoDraw," "Check for Updates," and "Check for Updates at Launch."

Difference from the Windows version: The Windows version has no application menu. "About NeoDraw," "Check for Updates," and "Check for Updates at Launch" are in the Help menu, and Exit appears at the end of the File menu as "Quit Alt+F4."

Separators appear immediately before "Open…" and "Place Files into Layout…".

A separator appears before "Bold," and "Italic" is the final item in the menu.

Difference from the Windows version: The shortcut for "Redo" in the Windows version is Ctrl+Y.

Separators appear before "Appearance" and before "Show move distance," and "Zoom with Scroll" is the final item. Details of these items are in 9.3.2 ("Ruler Units"), 1.2.2 ("Appearance"), 4.2.2 ("Font Settings…"), 9.4 ("Show move distance", "Guide bar", and "Snap to Grid"), and 9.3.1 ("Zoom with Scroll").

Because this menu is registered as the macOS Window menu, standard items such as the window list are automatically added by the OS in addition to the two items above.

Difference from the Windows version: The Windows version explicitly lists "Minimize Ctrl+M," "Zoom," and "Bring All to Front," and below a separator it lists the open windows (by window title). The frontmost window is checked, and choosing one brings that window to the front.

From left to right, row 2 contains the drawing tools (3.1.1), font size and line width (4.2.1; replaced by the fields in 7.2.1 while an image is selected), text alignment and formatting (4.2.4), z-order, flip, group, repair, and search (13.2.3), alignment and distribution (5.7), colors (6.1), and size, position, angle, and selection information (13.2.4).

In row 2, the font-size field, line-width field, image-related fields, text alignment, formatting, size, position, and angle controls are shown or hidden depending on the type of selected object. The display conditions are described for each item.

Shown only when there is a selection.

While a numeric field is being edited, automatic updates do not overwrite its value. The widths of numeric fields are fixed widths measured from the largest values they may contain.

During rotation dragging, the Angle field updates in real time and the angle is also displayed next to the cursor.

The context menu is composed of a common header (seven items that always appear) plus items determined by the selected target.

The position that was right-clicked is recorded and becomes the insertion position for subsequent Paste operations.

The selection changes as follows when right-clicking.

• Right-click an empty area of the page → clears the selection.
• Right-click an object → if it is not already selected, that object becomes selected.

Regardless of whether there is a selection, the following seven items always appear at the beginning of the context menu.

Right-clicking an empty area of the page clears the selection and shows only the seven common-header items. No target-specific section (below a separator) appears, nor does the common section used when something is selected ("Transparency…" and below).

In this state, "Copy," "Cut," and "Duplicate" are disabled; only "Paste" and "Select All" are available.

When you right-click an annotation such as a shape, line, text object, or image, the common header is followed by target-specific sections where applicable, then by the following items.

Depending on the type of what is selected, items for that target are added between the common header and the items above.

The following summarizes keyboard operations on the page when text is not being edited.

In cropping mode, Return (confirm) and Escape (cancel) take precedence over all other keyboard handling.

A double-click on the page is interpreted in the following order of priority.

If you double-click a node while in Bezier edit mode, it switches between a corner and a smooth node.