![lucid chart lucid chart](https://d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net/marketing/blog/2017Q3/10-Lucidchart-Features/Presentation-mode.png)
I then placed the two atop each other.įinally, I created a regular box of about the same size (but with no rotation). So I copied and pasted the shape, and used the Shape Options toolbar to give at a 271 degree rotation. Fortunately, I was able to use the Shape Options toolbar item (which looks like a square with bisecting dotted lines), and manually enter a 1 degree rotation. Frustratingly, though, no matter what I did, I could not manually achieve a rotation of less than 4 degrees, which was too much. Then I removed the “Data Store” text, and removed the background (using the blank color swatch as described above).Īfter re-selecting the shape, I used the rotation handle (represented by a curved line with arrows at each end) to rotate it.
![lucid chart lucid chart](https://apps4trainers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/lucidchart0-1024x346.png)
I dragged one of those shapes to my canvas, and sized it to be a square. As a regular shape, I could adjust its attributes, such as its line width and color, background color, and - most important - its rotation. In particular, I was interested in the Data Store shape, which is essentially two parallel lines with a solid background in between.
![lucid chart lucid chart](https://hot-town-images.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/kotv/production/2018/March/9/moore-2013-tornado-40-minutes-of-terror.1520619128000-0.jpeg)
Then I clicked the Lucidchart toolbar’s Line Color icon (which resembles a pen) and selected the blank color swatch. Selecting that box was tricky my approach was to slowly begin dragging a selection box up from the below, just until the lower box was selected. Removed the border from the bottom-right box.This was done by keeping the box selected, clicking the paintbucket icon in Lucidchart’s toolbar, and choosing the blank color swatch (usually the top-left swatch, displaying a subtle checkboard panel). Removed the background from that top-left box.I simply double-clicked the box and, upon seeing a blinking cursor, started typing. With my new box directly atop my original box, I held down Shift while tapping the left-arrow and up-arrow, four times each. I then hit the up-arrow key, then the left-arrow key, once each. To do this, I selected the new box (which was offset down and to the right by default). Offset the new box (which was now the topmost z-indexed item) up and to the left by about four pixels each.In Lucidchart, this is done using the your standard keyboard controls, or Lucidchart’s Edit menu. So I thought, what if I simply created two boxes: a border box, and a background box? To do this, I did the following: Part of the background may overflow the border. More often than not, the shading doesn’t perfectly fill the background. Then we’ll shade in the background (with, say, a blue pencil). We’ll typically draw the rectangular border (maybe with a black pen or pencil). But when we sketch things in real life, they don’t look perfect. That’s great if you want it to look perfect. Lucidchart then draws a border around the box, and fills it. In other words, when I create a box in Lucidchart, I define the origin and dimensions of the box, either by dragging with my mouse or by entering the values in a dialog. I first thought about what makes something look hand-sketched or, rather, what makes something look not hand-sketched. So I decided to head into Lucidchart to see what I could do there. Plus, I paid the sixty bucks up front for my Lucidchart subscription, dammit! It’s actually really simply Relying on myself to find an old paper copy of a drawing? Well, good luck with that! And there have been times where I’d needed to pull up an old diagram from months back. I also like to reuse diagrams, perhaps with minor modifications. For example, I tend to edit my diagrams nearly as often as I make edits to my articles. I’m an okay artist, but I could not produce a decent-looking hand sketch of boxes and arrows at all.Īnd even if it had worked, it wouldn’t have seemed like a very scalable solution. It took awhile, but I finally wound up with… an absolute mess. Literally, I grabbed a piece of white paper and a bunch of colored pencils, and began sketching. So I tried that approach for my next article. I’d seen such approaches in other articles, and - to me, at least - they really add something. What I was after was more of an organic, hand-sketched look. Even the theme selector that it offers really just allows you to toggle between color combinations. It’s not made for injecting personality - or any levity at all, really - into diagrams. Lucidchart offers a lot of shapes and tools, but it is really oriented towards getting the job done. It gets the point across, but it’s kind of impersonal, no?