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Using S.Draw - Tips, Tricks & Help |
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Filter Functions |
| S.Draw offers the ability to filter (display or hide) components or dimensions. Sometimes it might be useful to create a Sankey diagram that holds all the flow values of every component in the process, but for analyzing purposes only key components should be visible. With S.Draw you do not have to draw a new diagram, you just choose the list of components to hide out of your component catalogue. Remeber: A component can be anything you assign it to be - it can be matter, energy, money, network traffic (e.g. UDP), anything you want to display can be generated! Another goodie is the ability to size components in relation to each other. |
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Align Shapes |
| Nodes: Just drag the shapes across the drawing area. Streams: They are usually connected to the nodes - so if you change the position of the node, streams will get a new routing according to the options you set. To generate a different routing mark the stream and drag the corner-points to the new position. |
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Change node formats |
| You have several options to change the format of a node by choosing from a list of options. Just double click the node and enter the desired values.
These values can be the representation of the node (rectangle, arrow, circle) or the minimal values for those. |
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Change the Alignment of Text |
| Just drag the text to the new position - it will stay in this relative position even if you move its object ((node, stream). |
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Convert a Logo to a Reusable Shape |
| In order to use your logo (or any other picture) on your diagram you have to convert it into the BMP-format. Then import te bitmap under File:import:bitmap. |
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Create Flexible Diagrams |
| Flexible diagrams or templates are created the same way as normal diagrams. You enter your component information and position the nodes and streams across the drawing area.
Make sure components are assigned to streams and export the drawing as dbf-file. You have several ways of entering flow values now. Either by the standard procedure in S.Draw or by importing this dbf-file into another application and changing the flow values there. Those values can be reimported into S.Draw and such draw a picture of your process as it is represented by the flow values. |
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Creating Presentations |
| To create presentations you can use any application that you usually use for that purpose. You simply add your Sankey diagrams by importing the graphic files into the presentation templates. |
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Creating Web Pages |
| Use the function export: web page. This creates a html-file and an attached grafic representing the diagram. You can transform the webpage to your webserver or Intranet. Note, the webpage also has zooming capabilities. |
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Duplicate Object Formatting |
| You can duplicate the behavior of a stream or node. Mark the object and copy it. After inserting it, the new object holds all features of the copied object.
If you change the options for an object, S.Draw will ask you wether or not you would like to transfor the changes over to other objects as well. |
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Group Shapes as One Unit |
| S.Draw offers the ability to combine nodes and streams to compressed nodes and streams. This is used to shift from a higher detail level to a better overview in complicated processes.
Note: You can compress streams that flow between the same nodes (e.g. if you were drawing a single stream for every component between 2 nodes) |
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How to Export/Import Data |
| S.Draw offers you the possibility to export flow values into dBase compatible files. These flow values can be changed by other applications and used to update a diagram by importing it back into S.Draw.
NOTE: Only the flow values can be changed, it is not possible to create a new diagram or add new objects to a diagram using this function. |
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How to Export/Import Graphic Files |
| There are different ways to create graphic files. You can either copy the graphic to the clipboard and paste it into another application, or export files formatted as png, jpg, bmp and wmf direct from S.Draw. |
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Picture Your Processes with S.Draw Flowcharts |
| Create diagrams with result in mind. If you want to create a simple diagram it is enough to add one component to your component catalogue. If you want to perform component tracing, you have to add a list of components that are assigned to the various streams according to their occurence. The next step would be to establish the interconnectivity of your process. Draw as many nodes as you need for your abstraction and connect those nodes with streams. Add components to the stream and assign flow values to these components. That is it - you are done. |
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Reposition Shape Text |
| You can reposition any text that is displayed with objects or shapes. Just drag the text to the new position, it will remain its relative coordinates to the object even if you move that object. |
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Resize a Drawing Page |
| Resize the drawing page to any standard paper size by choosing Preferences/Graphic/Paper size. Paper sizes are 'hardwired' to standard paper sizes e.g.: A3 for European papers and letter, legal for US standards. If you print the drawing will be automatically resized to the current printer settings. |
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Working with Data |
| You have the ability to change the flow rates of components used in your diagram by updating those with another application and importing the data set into S.Draw. By this way you can generate quasi-templates of your process and feed live data into the diagram.
Of course we meet certain limitations on allowing that due to the complex structure of the data within a diagram. You can not add new objects or flow components to the diagram, every object you want to work on has to be already included in the template. If you have certain requirements to the interface we would gladly hear from them. |
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Working with Graphics |
| S.Draw exports diagrams as griphic files using several mechanisms:
One is to port the graphics over the Windows Clipboard and insert it into another application, the other is to export diagrams in certain graphic formats like JPG, BMP, PNG, WMF and EPS. You can insert those graphic files into any application that supports any of these formats and so create your presentation. |
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Terminology |
| When we speak of Sankey diagrams we use the following naming convention:
Nodes: Are the sources and targets of of flows. Streams: Sometimes referred to as edges, are the connections between nodes. Components: Are the carriers of the flows and can represent anything like, for example water, carbon dioxide, energy in any form, money, ... Anything can be a component in any form, In S.Draw you can even apply factors that scale one component to the other. You can work on different units then, like 1 [g] of a substance would automatically translate to 1000 [mg], or 1 USD would automatically be calculated to EURO by simply multiplying with the provided factor. Component filters: Are used to selectively display certain flow components in a diagram. This is especially useful for component tracing, when only a certain component in the system might be interesting for a certain task (e.g. water distribution). Unit filter: The same system as used for filtering out components is used for units. This should help in building diagrams that hold material AND energy flows together in a single diagram instance. Although you might want to hold both types of flows in a single diagram it mostly is useful to display just a single instance (e.g. material flows, cost flows, energy flows). Combined nodes/streams: Are utilized to give a better overview of certain parts of a process. You are able to rebuild a process with all detail levels but break it up to overview diagrams by combining certain stages of the process into a single stage. |
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