MyDraw User Guide 1

1 Introduction

MyDraw is a powerful, yet easy to use diagram software. It provides a large selection of shapes, formula based
engine like in Microsoft Visio, a lot of automatic layout algorithms and many other features. The following list
outlines the main features of MyDraw in more details:
UI
Library browser
Pan and zoom view
Drawing view with different view modes
Rulers
Guidelines
Ribbon and command bars UIs with the ability to switch between them
Predefined UI themes:
Windows 8
Windows 7 Aero
Windows XP
Mac OS El Capitan
Mac OS Lion
Several windows classic themes
A "New Drawing" dialog with a large set of drawing templates to choose from
Document
Multiple pages
Large number of predefined shapes
Grouping and ungrouping of shapes
1D and 2D barcodes
Measurement units and scaling
Formulas
Interaction
Rotation, scaling and moving of shapes and groups
Many tools such as pointer tool, rectangle tool, ellipse tool, geometry tool, pan tool, etc.
Snap and glue
Spacing and positioning of shapes
Automatic layouts and routing
Shape protections
In place editing and formatting of texts
Tooltips and clickable hyperlinks for shapes and groups
Printing
Print dialog with settings for page size, margins and layout mode
Ability to exclude certain shapes and groups from printing
Formats
Native MyDraw XML and binary based formats
Native MyDraw XML template format

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MyDraw User Guide 2

Visio Drawing (VSDX) import and export

Import of map data from ESRI shapefiles (SHP)
Import and export of genealogical data in GEDCOM format (GED), for example: family trees
Raster image export: bitmap (BMP), JPEG, PNG
Vector image export: SVG
PDF export

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MyDraw User Guide 3

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1-2
2. Licensing 5
3. Version History 6
4. User Interface 7
4.1. UI Overview 7-8
4.2. New Drawing Dialog 8-9
4.3. Drawing View 9-12
4.4. Library Browser 12-16
4.5. Pan and Zoom View 16-17
4.6. Page Navigator 17-18
4.7. Ribbon 18-21
5. Basic Tasks 22
5.1. Working with Drawings 22-23
5.2. Working with Shapes 23-26
5.3. Working with Groups 26-27
5.4. Working with Pages 27-28
5.5. Page Settings 28-30
5.6. Inserting Images 30-31
5.7. Keyboard Shortcuts 31-33
5.8. Application Settings 33
6. File Formats 34
6.1. File Formats Overview 34-35
6.2. AutoCAD Drawing Interchange 35
6.3. ESRI Shapefile 35-37
6.4. Genealogical Data Communication 37-38
6.5. Image Export 38-40
6.6. PDF 40-41
6.7. Web Page 41-42
6.8. Visio Drawing 42
7. Special Diagram Types 43

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7.1. Family Tree Diagrams 43-44

8. Advanced Tasks 45
8.1. Editing Shapes 45-46
8.2. Custom Shapes 46-47
8.3. Automatic Layouts 47-49
8.4. Drawing Templates 49-50
8.5. Inserting Barcodes 50-52
8.6. Mail Merge 52-53

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MyDraw User Guide 5

2 Licensing

Online Activation
Activate MyDraw Product Licenses

If you have purchased a license for MyDraw, you can activate it as follows:
1. Launch MyDraw and create a new blank drawing
2. Click the File menu and then About
3. Enter the username (e-mail) and password of your MyDraw account
4. Click the Activate button to activate the software
5. Restart MyDraw for changes to take effect

Revoke or Transfer MyDraw Licenses

At any time you can transfer you license to another computer by deactivating it first on your current computer
and then activating the license on the new computer following the above procedure. To deactivate your license on
your current computer, do the following:
1. Launch MyDraw and create a new blank drawing
2. Click the File menu and then About
3. Enter the username (e-mail) and password of your MyDraw account
4. Click the Deactivate button to deactivate the software
5. Restart MyDraw for changes to take effect
After deactivating a license on one computer, you will be able to activate it on another computer.

Local Activation
If the computer you have installed MyDraw on doesn't have an Internet connection, you can activate MyDraw
locally by doing the following:
1. Click the File menu in MyDraw's ribbon and then click About.
2. Click the Local License button
3. Click the License button and you'll be redirected to the purchase page from where you can purchase a
license.
4. Use the Copy Machine Id button of the About dialog to copy your machine ID. Then paste it in an email,
send it to [email protected] and we'll respond with a license key.
After you receive a registration code click File -> About -> Local License and in the dialog that opens, perform
these steps:
1. Press the Add... key.
2. Enter (or copy / paste) the license key you obtained from Nevron.
3. Press OK.
4. Press Close.
That's it, you have successfully applied the license key to MyDraw.

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MyDraw User Guide 6

3 Version History
Version 2.0.0
New file formats:
AutoCAD (DXF) export
Visio 2003-2010 Drawings (VSD, VDX)
Visio Stencils (VSSX)
Visio 2003-2010 Stencils (VSS, VSX)
Enhanced Metafiles (EMF)
New shape libraries
New drawing templates
Autosave
Multi-monitor support
UI improvements and bug fixes

Version 1.0.1
UI, stability and performance improvements
Bug fixes

Version 1.0.0
First version of MyDraw

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MyDraw User Guide 7

4 User Interface

4.1 UI Overview
The following image shows the main parts of MyDraw's user interface (UI):

Drawing View - this is the area in which you can create your diagrams
Library Browser - lets you quickly insert shapes into the drawing view using drag and drop
Pan and Zoom View - presents a small preview of the drawing document and can be used to quickly
move to another area of the document
Ribbon - contains a set of buttons, menus, combo boxes and other command controls organized logically
in groups and tabs that let you manipulate the diagram, add, arrange and style shapes and so on
Ribbon Search Box - lets you quckly search for and execute a command
Page Navigator - lets you add more pages to your drawing document, name, delete or edit them and
switch between them
Zoom Slider - lets you quickly zoom in and out the drawing view
Status Bar - shows useful information about the current selection and the mouse pointer location

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4.2 New Drawing Dialog

The New Drawing dialog is shown when you start MyDraw and lets you quickly create a blank new drawing or create
a drawing based on a drawing template.

The dialog consists of two main parts:

Sidebar
The sidebar is placed at the left side of the New Drawing dialog and lets you open one of the recently opened
drawings. You can also pin/unpin and remove drawings from the recent documents list. Below the list of recent
documents you will find an Open button that lets you browse to a drawing of your choice and open it in MyDraw.

Main Content
The main content of the New Drawing dialog lets you create a blank new drawing or create a drawing based on a
template and consists of the following widgets:
Template Search Box - lets you search for a drawing template by name. Simply start typing in the
search box and you will see a list of matching templates. To open any the templates in the list, click it
with the left mouse button or select it with the arrow keys and press Enter.
Breadcrumb - lets you go back to a parent category in the list of templates.
Template Picker - lets you select a drawing template to open in MyDraw. At the root level of the
template selector you can also select the "Blank Drawing" option to create a blank new drawing or the
"New from Existing..." option to create a new drawing based on an exsiting one. The other items in the
template picker are template categores. If you click any of them, the category will open and you will see
its templates and sub categories.

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4.3 Drawing View

The drawing view is the area in which you create your diagrams. To help you position shapes more precisely it shows a
grid and rulers by default. The view also aids you by providing snapping behavior to grids, rulers and guidelines.
Guidelines are vertical or horizontal lines you can use to align shapes to. To create a guideline simply drag the
horizontal or the vertical ruler towards the drawing view. If you want to center the guideline in the page, right click it
and select Center in Page.
You can show and hide different elements of the drawing view as well as to control its zooming mode through the View
tab page of MyDraw's ribbon:

Show Ribbon Group

The Show ribbon group lets you toggle the visibility of the different elements such as grid, guidelines, ports,
rulers, etc. The following image illustrates the elements you can show or hide using the check boxes of the Show
ribbon group:

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You can use the Splitter collapse buttons to collapse and expand the splitter pane and the library. MyDraw saves
these settings, so the splitter positions you set will be applied again the next time you start MyDraw.

Zoom Ribbon Group

The Zoom ribbon group lets you change the zoom mode of the drawing view to one of the following:
Normal - in this mode the drawing view zoom factor is not automatically calculated
Fit to Page - the drawing view is automatically zoomed in or our so that a whole page is shown in the
available area
Fit to Width - the drawing view is zoomed so that the whole width of the current page is visible
Fit to Height - the drawing view is zoomed so that the whole height if the current page is visible
You can use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons to zoom in and out the drawing view respectively. Alternatively
you can use the mouse wheel while holding with the Ctrl keyboard button or the following keyboard shortcuts:
Zoom In - Ctrl + "+"
Zoom Out - Ctrl + "-"
Zoom to 100% - Ctrl + "0"
The keyboard shortcuts for zooming are identical to those of most modern web browsers, which makes them easy to
remember.

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Settings Ribbon Group

The Settings ribbon group contains 5 buttons. When clicked each of them displays a dialog for editing the
properties of the object it's associated with:
Page - edits the properties of the active page. For more information check out the Page Settings topic.
Grid and Rulers - edits the properties of the grid and the rulers.
Routing - configures the routing manager and the routing settings.
Line Jumps - edits the line jumps settings.
Print Layout - edits the print layout settings.
Drawing Settings - configures the whole drawing.

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4.4 Library Browser

The library browser is a navigation bar which contains several sets of shapes, called libraries. You can drag and drop
any shape from the library browser to the drawing view in order to add shapes to the diagram and vice versa - you
can drag and drop shapes from the drawing view area to the currently selected library to add them to that library to
reuse them later on. Once you’ve dropped the desired shape in the drawing view of MyDraw you can then customize
it using the ribbon, or the context menu. To show the shapes of another library simply click its icon in the library
browser.

Library Browser Parts

The following image illustrates the parts of MyDraw's library browser.

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The numbered parts are the following:

1. Predefined Libraries button - lets you quickly open and close one or more of the predefined libraries
2. New Library button - lets you create a library of your own. When you click this button, a dialog in which
you can enter the name and the author of the new library will open. When ready click OK and a new
library will be added to the library browser. You can drag and drop any shape from the drawing view to
this new library view and it will be added to it. You can use buttons 3 and 4 in the toolbar of the library
browser to load and save libraries.
3. Open Library button - opens an existing library from file.
4. Save Library button - saves the currently selected library to file.
5. Close Library button - closes the currently selected library.
6. Icons View button - switches the library browser to icons view.

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7. List View button - switches the library browser to list view.

8. Thumbnails View button- switches the library browser to thumbnails view.
9. Default Display Order button - shows the library shapes in the order they are defined in the library.
10. Text Ascending Display Order button - sorts the library shapes by their text in ascending order.
11. Text Descending Display Order button - sorts the library shapes by their text in descending order.
12. View Libraries button - switches the library browser to library view mode.
13. Library Search button - switches the library browser to library search mode. In this mode you can enter
one or more characters and the library browser will show you all shapes that match them. You can also
configure the type of the search using the "Match Mode" combo box and the "Case Sensitive" check box.
14. Library View - contains the shapes of the currently selected library.
15. Libraries toolbar - contains the currently opened libraries. The names of the the libraries are shown as a
tooltip when you hold the mouse cursor for a short time over the icon of a library.
16. Selected Library - indicates the currently selected library.

Predefined Libraries

Most of the drawing templates come with several opened predefined libraries. If you want to open or close more
of the predefined libraries, click the Predefined Libraries button (item 1 in the "Library Browser Parts"
section). A dialog with all available predefined libraries will open (see the screenshot on the left).
Check the predefined libraries you want to be opened, uncheck the ones you want to be closed and when ready
click the OK button.

Search Shapes

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The Library Search button (item 13 in the "Library Browser Parts" section) switches the library browser to
library search mode. Enter several characters in the "Look for" text box and MyDraw will show you all shapes
from the currently opened libraries whose names contain these characters. If you want the check to be case
sensitive, check the Case Sensitive check box.
You can also choose between one of the following matching modes:
Contains - matches all shapes whose name contains the entered characters
Starts with - matches all shapes whose name starts with the entered characters
Word Starts with - matches all shapes whose name contains a word that starts with the entered
characters
Ends with - matches all shapes whose name ends with the entered characters
Word Ends with - matches all shapes whose name contains a word that ends with the entered characters
Contains Any Word - matches all shapes whose name contains a word starting with one of the words of
a given substring and orders the matched shapes by the number of matched words
Contains All Words - matches all shapes whose name contains all of the entered words

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4.5 Pan and Zoom View

You can use the Pan and Zoom view to jump to a different location of the drawing view or to zoom it in or out. To
move across the drawing view simply drag the pan and zoom view rectangle with the left mouse button. If you resize
this rectangle using the tracers at its corners, then the drawing view will zoom in or out.
The following image demonstrates how to use the Pan and Zoom View to set the visible area of the drawing view.
Note how the visible area of the drawing view matches exactly the red rectangle of the Pan and Zoom View.

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MyDraw User Guide 17

4.6 Page Navigator

The page navigator lets you add, remove, rename and edit pages to your diagram documents and navigate through
these pages.

To add a page, click the Add button. You can then click on the button associated with a given page to navigate to it.
The button All shows a menu with all pages of the current document, so you can easily switch to the desired page.
To rename a page, right click it and select Rename from the context menu.
To delete a page, right click it and select Delete from the context menu.
To create a duplicate (i.e. an exact clone) of a page, right click it and select Duplicate from the context menu.
To edit the properties of a page, right click it and select Page Properties from the context menu.
The button All shows a menu with all pages of the current document, so you can easily switch to the desired page.

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MyDraw User Guide 18

4.7 Ribbon
Home Tab Page
Action Tab Page
Arrange Tab Page
Insert Tab Page
Review Tab Page
Mailings Tab Page
View Tab Page
Application Menu

Each command item in the ribbon has a tooltip, which contains information about the command and its
keyboard shortcut (if any), so when in doubt about what a given command does, simply move the mouse pointer
over it and wait a second for the tooltip to show up.

Home Tab Page

The Home tab page is the default page of the diagram ribbon.

As the image above shows the Home tab page is organized into the following ribbon groups:
Clipboard - lets you cut or copy the currently selected shapes. When there are compatible objects in the
clipboard you can also use the Paste button to paste them in your diagram.
Font - lets you control the font, size and appearance of the text of the currently selected shape.
Paragraph - lets you specify the text alignment of the currently selected shape.
Geometry Format - lets you control the fill, stroke, shadow and corner rounding of the currently
selected shape. For 1D shape (i.e. connectors) you can also specify the begin and end arrowhead styles.
Tools - contains a set of tools that you can activate in order to create custom shapes, edit the geometry of
a shape, insert text, pan the diagram or simply to go back to the default tool as shown on the above image -
the pointer tool.
Editing - lets you undo/redo the recently made changes to your diagram, as well as to select all shapes, all
1D shapes or all 2D shapes.
Search - contains buttons for finding and replacing texts in shapes

Action Tab Page

The Action tab page lets you manipulate the currently selected shape/shapes.

The Action tab page consists of the following ribbon groups:

Group - lets you group and ungroup a set of shapes.
Rotate - lets you flip or rotate a shape.
Compose - lets you create a complex geometry shape by performing a geometry operation to a set of
shapes.

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Arrange Tab Page

The Arrange tab page lets you position, size and align your shapes:

The Arrange tab page consists of the following ribbon groups:

Align - lets you align two or more shapes.
Resize - lets you size one or more shapes to another shape.
Position - lets you position a shape within the page.
Z-order - lets you bring a shape above or below other shapes.
Spacing - lets you configure the spacing between two or more shapes.
Grid - lets you align or size shapes to grid.
Snap - lets you configure the snapping behavior of MyDraw.
Layout - contains a Layout Shapes button, which when clicked opens a dialog for selecting, configuring
and applying an automatic layout to the selected or all shapes of your diagram.

Insert Tab Page

The Insert tab page lets you insert an object into the document.

The Insert tab page currently has the following ribbon groups:
Illustrations - lets you easily insert an image or a 1D/2D barcode to your diagram. If you insert a
barcode, you can then right click it to modify its properties.
Symbols - lets you insert special text characters and symbols into the text block of a shape
Text - lets you insert hyperlinks and different text fields into the text block of a shape

Review Tab Page

The Review tab page lets you perform a spell check of the texts of a drawing.

The Review tab page currently has the following ribbon buttons:
Spell Check - a toggle button that enables or disables the spell checking for the whole document.
Symbols - lets you select the spell check dictionary to use. You can use any of the included spell check
dictionaries or load a different spell check dictionary using the Browse button. MyDraw is compatible
with Open Office spell check dictionaries.

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MyDraw User Guide 20

Mailings Tab Page

The Mailings tab page lets you configure and perform a mail merge operation.

For more information, check out the Mail Merge topic.

View Tab Page

The View tab page lets you control the visibility, the behavior and the settings of various elements of the drawing
view.

For more information, check out the Drawing View topic.

Application Menu
The application menu is shown when you click on File. It contains menu items for saving the diagram or loading a
diagram from a file, for printing and export and so on. It also contains the menu item for showing the About dialog
and the button that shows the Options dialog, which you can use to switch the current UI theme, or switch to
traditional command bar UI. It also lets you switch the user interface to another language. The application menu
also contains a New menu option that opens the New Drawing Dialog.
The right side of the application menu shows the recently opened/saved documents with the ability to pin the ones
you find more important.

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MyDraw User Guide 22

5 Basic Tasks

5.1 Working with Drawings

This topic explains how to perform the following operations:
Create a new drawing
Open a drawing
Save a drawing

Create a new drawing

MyDraw by default starts with the New Drawing dialog, which lets you quickly create a new blank drawing or a
drawing based on a drawing template. At any time you can also click File and then New (or press Ctrl+N) to
start a new diagram.

Open a drawing
To open a drawing click File and then Open or press Ctrl+O from the keyboard. An "Open File" dialog will open
in which you can select the file you want to open. MyDraw currently supports Nevron XML Drawings (NDX) and
Nevron Binary Drawings (NDB). You can also drag and drop a compatible file format to the drawing view of
MyDraw and it will open.
For your convenience MyDraw also maintains a list of the recently used drawing documents at the right side of
the application menu. You can click any of the documents there to open it. You can also use the pin buttons next
to each recent document to pin it to/unpin it from the recent documents menu.

Save a drawing
To save a drawing click File and then Save or press Ctrl+S from the keyboard. A "Save File" dialog will open in
which you can specify the name and the type of the file MyDraw should save your diagram to. If you want to save
your drawing as a template, select the MyDraw XML Drawing Template format.

Note that if you want to preserve all features and formatting of your drawings, you should always save them
in one of the MyDraw native formats (NDX or NDB). If you need a drawing in another format, you can then
save it to another format, too, but it is recommended that you awlays save it to a native MyDraw format first
if you plan to edit it later.

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MyDraw User Guide 23

5.2 Working with Shapes

This topic explains how to perform the following operations:
Add a shape
Connect two shapes
Select, move, resize and rotate a shape
Format shape's geometry
Add text to a shape or to the page
Format shape's text

Add a shape
Adding a shape in MyDraw is very easy - simply drag and drop any shape you like to add to your diagram from the
library browser to the drawing area of MyDraw as shown in the following image:

Connect two shapes

To connect two 2D shapes you can use the Line or the Connector tool. You can find these tools in the Home tab of
the Ribbon. To activate any of them simply select the desired one. Once you’ve selected the connector type you
would like to use click on a port of the shape you want the connector to start from, then drag the mouse cursor to a
port of the shape you want the connector to end at.
When the mouse is over a port or the contour of a shape, it will get highlighted in red, this indicates that you can
start/end the connector there. The following image shows the result of using the Line tool to connect a rectangle
and an ellipse.

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MyDraw User Guide 24

Select, move, resize and rotate a shape

To select a shape either click it or click and hold somewhere outside of it and then drag to
trigger the rectangular selection tool and select it. When the shape is selected a set of trackers
will appear around it as shown in the picture to the left.
To move a shape simply select it and drag it across the drawing area until you reach the
desired location.
To resize a shape, drag one of its corner trackers.
To rotate a shape use the circular tracker above the shape. You can also use the buttons in the
Rotate ribbon group of the Action tab from the ribbon.

Format shape's geometry

To change the appearance of a shape use the split buttons in the Geometry Format ribbon group of the Home
tab. They will let you change the fill, stroke and shadow of a shape, as well as its corner rounding. If the selected
shape is a 1D shape (i.e. a connector) you can also change its start and end arrowheads.

Add text to a shape or to the page

To add text to a shape, activate the Pointer tool (the one that looks like an arrow) and double click the shape or
directly start typing. An in-place rich text editor for entering/modifying the text of the shape will open. You can use
the buttons in the Font and Paragraph ribbon groups to format and style the text of the shape. Note that in text
edit mode the text formatting ribbon commands act on the text selected in the rich text editor, but if you have simply
selected the shape and you have not entered in text edit mode, the text formatting ribbon commands modify the
formatting of the whole text of the shape.
When you have finished entering text press Escape from the clipboard or click outside of the shape to apply the text
change. If you want to cancel the text change and revert to the previous text of the shape press Shift + Escape from
the keyboard.
If you want to simply add some text to the page, then activate the Text tool (the one that looks like the letter "T"),
click and hold somewhere in the page and drag to create a text area. Then double click this text area and enter your
text.

Format shape's text

If you want to format the whole text of a shape at once you can simply select the shape and use the controls in the
Font and Paragraph ribbon groups.

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To format only parts of the shape's text, you should double click the shape in order to enter in in-place edit mode.
You should then select the text you want to style and use the controls from the ribbon to apply the desired
formatting to the selected text. You can then select another piece of the text and format it differently and so on.

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MyDraw User Guide 26

5.3 Working with Groups

In MyDraw groups are a special kind of shapes that can aggregate other shapes. For example the following is a group
that aggregates 3 shapes - a square, a circle and a triangle:

Groups support drill down selection, which means that you can select a shape within the group by first clicking on
the group to select the group and then clicking on the particular shape within the group to select it.

Group shapes together

To group two or more shapes together, you should select them and then click on the Group button from the
Action ribbon tab or press Ctrl+Shift+G from the keyboard. You can group not only shapes but other groups as
well. When a set of shapes are grouped together they will act as one shape, which means that you will be able to
easily rotate and/or resize all of them at once.

Ungroup a group of shapes

If you want to ungroup a group of shapes, click the group to select it and then click the Ungroup button from the
Action ribbon tab or press Ctrl+Shift+U from the keyboard.

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MyDraw User Guide 27

5.4 Working with Pages

Each MyDraw drawing can have one or more pages. You can easily add, remove and rename pages using the Page
Navigator. You can also use the page navigator to switch to a different page.
The sections below describe how to perform some common tasks on the current page.

Change page size and margins

To change the size of the current page, right click somewhere in it and from the context menu that appears, select
Page Properties... The page properties dialog will open. In it, take a look at the "Size" group box in the
"General" tab page and use the "Page Size" and "Page Orientation" combo boxes to set the size and the orientation
of the current page, respectively. The "General" tab page also lets you change the page margins.

Change page background and border

To modify the appearance of the page, right click somewhere in it and from the context menu that appears, select
Page Properties... In the page properties dialog, select the "Appearance" tab and use the property editors in it
to modify the background, the border and the border thickness of the page.

Change page drawing scale

MyDraw uses a special measurement unit for all display related measures, which is the DIP (device independent
pixel that is 1/96 of an inch). By default the drawing scale is configured so 1 DIP equals 1 DIP (identity scale).
Some drawings, however, require to display either too small or too large scenes, which are impossible to visualize
without a drawing scale. In order to visualize them in a comfortable for you manner you can use the drawing scale
options.
The drawing scale is a user defined ratio between the logical unit and the display unit. For example, 1 meter = 1
mm is a commonly used Metric drawing scale. This means that 1 mm of your drawing represents 1 meter of the
real world space.
You can change the page drawing scale from the "General" tab of the page properties dialog, or you can simply
right click one of the drawing view rulers and select Change Drawing Scale from the context menu. Then in
the dialog that appears you can either enter the drawing scale manually from the measure up-down buttons or
click the Load Drawing Scale button to select one of the predefined drawing scales. Changing the drawing
scale will also change the measurement units of the ruler and the measurements of the currently selected diagram
item, which are shown in the status bar.

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5.5 Page Settings

To edit the settings of a page, right click it in the page navigator and select Page Properties. Alternatively, you can
right click somewhere in the page and select Page Properties from the context menu. As most property editors in
MyDraw, the page property editor is organized in tabs.

Size and Scale

MyDraw’s default page size is A4 portrait. The first two settings in the page property editor are the Drawing Scale
and Size. Depending on your needs you can modify the drawing scale or the size of the page.

Padding

Page padding is the spacing applied to the page when you size it to its content by right-clicking somewhere in the
page and selecting Size to Content.

Appearance

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To change the background color and border of the page of your diagram, go to the Appearance tab. To edit the
main color, select Background and choose the type of fill you’d like to use. You will find plenty of opportunities
including Color Fill, Stock, Linear, Radial, or Advanced Gradient Fill, Hatch or Image Fill. Each of those fill types
can be additionally modified to achieve the result you’re looking for.
To edit the border of your page, click the Border button and choose the type, color, and rounding of the border.
Don’t forget to also specify border thickness. With MyDraw you can choose to have a border on all sides of your
drawing area or on specific sides only.

Page Items

The tree view on the left side of the dialog shows the page hierarchy. Of special interest is the Items collection. It
contains all items that are placed in the page, for example shapes, groups, guide lines, etc. You can see the items by
expanding the Items collection and you can click any of the items to inspect and modify its properties.

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5.6 Inserting Images

The Insert tab page of MyDraw's ribbon lets you easily insert images.

To insert an image click the Image button of the Insert tab. A file dialog for selecting an image file will open.
MyDraw currently supports the following image formats:
Bitmap
GIF, including animated GIFs
JPEG
PNG
Nevron Raster Image (NRI)
Another way to insert images in your drawing is to fill a shape with an image. To do so, right click a shape, choose
Format Geometry from the context menu and from the submenu select Geometry Fill. The fill editor dialog will
open. In that dialog select Image Fill for fill type as shown on the following screenshot:

Click the Browse for image button to select an image to fill the shape with. If the image is an animated GIF, you
can check the Enable Frame Animation check box to insert it as an animated image.
Using the Texture Mapping button you can specify how the selected image should fill the shape - centered,
stretched, aligned to a specific side or corner or tiled.
The Enter image URL button lets you load an image from the Web.

All images inserted in MyDraw are embedded in your drawings, which means that they do not depend on the
file they were loaded from. This makes MyDraw drawings fully portable as you do not need to distribute any
additional files with them.

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5.7 Keyboard Shortcuts

MyDraw comes with extensive support for keyboard navigation and keyboard shortcuts for executing commonly
used diagram commands. The sections bellow describe the supported keyboard shortcuts divided in different
sections based on their action.

Note that most keyboard shortcuts for Windows use the Ctrl modifier key, while the equivalent ones for Mac
use the Command modifier key instead.

File Commands
Ctrl / Command + N - creates new drawing
Ctrl / Command + O - shows a dialog for selecting a drawing and opens it
Ctrl / Command + S - saves the current drawing to file
Ctrl / Command + P - prints the current drawing

Edit Commands
Ctrl / Command + X - cuts the selection
Ctrl / Command + C - copies the selection
Ctrl / Command + V - pastes the contents of the clipboard
Delete - deletes the selected shapes
Ctrl / Command + A - selects all shapes
Escape - deselects the selected shapes

Arrange and Transform Commands

Arrow Keys - move selected shapes
Ctrl / Command + H - flip horizontal
Ctrl / Command + J - flip vertical
Ctrl / Command + L - rotate left
Ctrl / Command + R - rotate right

View Commands
Ctrl / Command + [+] - zoom in, you can also use Ctrl / Command + Mouse Wheel
Ctrl / Command + [-] - zoom out, you can also use Ctrl / Command + Mouse Wheel
Ctrl / Command + 0 - zoom to 100%
Ctrl / Command + G - show/hide grid
Ctrl / Command + B - show/hide page breaks
Ctrl / Command + R - show/hide rulers
Ctrl / Command + L - show/hide guidelines
Ctrl / Command + Alt + P - show/hide ports

Tools Commands
The shortcuts below activate one of the drawing tools:
Ctrl / Command + 1 - activates the pointer tool
Ctrl / Command + 2 - activates the draw rectangle tool
Ctrl / Command + 3 - activates the draw ellipse tool
Ctrl / Command + 4 - activates the draw line tool

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Ctrl / Command + 5 - activates the draw cubic bezier tool

Ctrl / Command + 6 - activates the draw arc tool
Ctrl / Command + 7 - activates the draw elliptical arc tool
Ctrl / Command + 8 - activates the draw connector tool
Ctrl / Command + 9 - activates the create text tool

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5.8 Application Settings

MyDraw lets you configure various aspects of its appearance and behavior. To access the application settings open
the File menu and click the Options button. The application options dialog will open:

MyDraw's application settings are organized in 3 tab pages:

Application Settings
The application settings lets you configure the following:
Command UI - specifies whether MyDraw should use a ribbon or command bars (menus and
toolbars)
UI Theme - specifies the UI theme to use
Language - specifies MyDraw's display language
Auto Save Interval - defines the time interval for auto-saving the currently opened document. By
default set to 2 minutes, which means that MyDraw will save any unsaved changes to your document
every 2 minutes and offer you to recover your document in case of an unexpected shut down or crash.
To change the auto-save interval simply select the desired item from the drop down list. If you want to
disable the auto-save feature (not recommended), select "Not Defined".

Documents Settings
The Documents tab lets you configure the Author and Company name that will be set to each new drawing you
create with MyDraw.

General Settings
The General tab lets you configure the following:
Developer Mode - if checked MyDraw will run in developer more showing you more settings and
option to set expressions to the properties shown in most dialogs.
Email Send Settings - lets you configure the email send settings MyDraw should use when sending e-
mail messages result of a mail merge operation.
Warn When Saving to Non Native Format - if checked MyDraw will show a warning message
that saving to a document format other than the native MyDraw document formats (NDX and NDB)
may lead to loss of information and formatting.

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6 File Formats

6.1 File Formats Overview

MyDraw can save and load drawings in many popular file formats. The following table illustrates the file formats
currently supported by MyDraw and whether they can be used to load drawings, to save drawings or both. The file
formats are ordered alphabetically.

File Format Load Save Notes

AutoCAD Drawing ✘ ✔ Save exports only the active page of the drawing.
Interchange (DXF)
Enhanced Metafile ✔ ✔ Save exports only the active page of the drawing.
(EMF and EMF+)
ESRI Shapefile (SHP) ✔ ✘
Genealogical Data ✔ ✔ Save creates an empty file if no family tree shapes are present in the
Communication diagram. For more information check out the Family Tree Diagrams
(GEDCOM) topic.
MyDraw Binary ✔ ✔ Native MyDraw format. Preserves all formatting and information.
Drawing (NDB)
MyDraw XML Drawing ✔ ✔ Native MyDraw format. Preserves all formatting and information.
(NDX)
MyDraw XML Drawing ✔ ✔ Native MyDraw format. Preserves all formatting and information.
Template (NDTX)
Portable Document ✘ ✔ Save exports only the active page of the drawing.
Format (PDF)
Raster Images (BMP, ✘ ✔ Diagrams cannot be loaded from raster images, but raster images
PNG, JPG, GIF) can be inserted in a diagram. Save exports only the active page of
the drawing.
Scalable Vector ✘ ✔ Save exports only the active page of the drawing.
Graphics (SVG)
Visio 2003-2010 ✘ ✔
Drawing (VSD)
Visio 2003-2010 XML ✔ ✔
Drawing (VDX)
Visio Drawing (VSDX) ✔ ✔
Web Page (HTML) ✘ ✔ Save exports the whole diagram to a single HTML page. If the
diagram has multiple pages, tab navigation is added to the resulting
HTML page.

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6.2 AutoCAD Drawing Interchange

MyDraw lets you easily export the active page of any drawing to AutoCAD Drawing Interchange format (DXF). You
can do so in two ways:

Vector Image Export

You can export the active page to AutoCAD Drawing Interchange format (DXF) via the Vector Image Export
dialog. To open it, click File and then Export To Vector Image. The following dialog will open:

Click the Save Image button and select "AutoCAD Drawing Interchange" for file type. For more information
about the Vector Image Export dialog, check out the Image Export documentation topic.

Save As Dialog
To directly save the active page of the currently opened dialog to AutoCAD Drawing Interchange format (DXF),
click File and then Save As. In the save dialog that opens select "AutuCAD Drawing Interchange" for file type,
enter file name and click Save.

6.3 ESRI Shapefile

MyDraw provides support for importing of geographical map data from the popular ESRI shapefile format (".shp").
To import a map in MyDraw, click the File menu and select Open. In the open file dialog that opens, select "ESRI
Shapefile" for file type, select the shapefile to import and click Open.
If the shapefile you want to open has an accompanying data file (i.e. a file with the same name, but with a different
extension - ".dbf"), the following dialog will open:

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This dialog lets you configure how the data from the DBF file should be used when importing the map in MyDraw.
The "Name and Text" group box lets you select the columns that should provide the names and the texts of the
imported shapes, as well at in what zoom range the shapes and their text should be visible.
The "Fill" group box lets you select a column, whose values should be used for filling. The filling is defined by the
selected number of colors, begin and end color. MyDraw will automatically create color shades starting from the
selected begin color and ending at the end color. This lets you easily color a map by a data column defined in the
data file. For example, you can color the countries in a world map based on their population. The countries with
small population - white, the ones with more population - light green, those with large population - green and the
countries with most population - dark green.

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6.4 Genealogical Data Communication

MyDraw comes with full support for importing and exporting family tree diagrams to the popular Genealogical Data
Communication (GEDCOM) format. GEDCOM is the standard for exchanging genealogical data (like family trees)
between different genealogical software. It is commonly used for creating family tree diagrams.

GEDCOM Import
To open a GEDCOM file in MyDraw:
1. Click the File menu
2. Click Open
3. Select "Genealogical Data Communication (*.ged)" for file type
4. Select the GEDCOM file you want to open and click the Open button

GEDCOM Export
To save a GEDCOM file in MyDraw:
1. Click the File menu
2. Click Save As
3. Select "Genealogical Data Communication (*.ged)" for file type
4. Select the file you want to save to and click the Save button

Note that when exporting a diagram to GEDCOM format only the information contained in family tree
shapes will be exported. You will loose all other shapes and all formating and positioning. If you want to
preserve the diagram with all of its shapes and formatting then please also save it in one of the native
MyDraw formats - NDX or NDB.

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6.5 Image Export

Export a Drawing to Raster Image

MyDraw supports exporting of drawing to a set of popular raster image formats like bitmap (BMP), PNG and
JPEG. To export a drawing to a raster image, click File and then Export to Raster Image... The following
dialog will open:

In this dialog you can specify whether the whole page or only a part of it should be exported as well as the
resolution of the generated image in dots per inch. Note that the part of the active page that is going to be
exported to image will be highlighted, so that you can easily see what's going to be exported and what's not. When
ready, click the Save Image button to save the image to a file or use the Copy To Clipboard button to copy it
to system's clipboard, so that you can paste it easily in other programs for further processing.

Export a Drawing to Vector Image

MyDraw can export a drawing to a vector image. The following vector image formats are currently supported:
Enhanced Metafile (EMF)
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
AutoCAD Drawing Interchange (DXF)
To export the active page of a drawing to a vector image, click File and then Export to Vector Image... A
dialog similar to the one for exporting to raster images (it is shown above) will open:

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In this dialog you can specify whether the whole page or only a part of it should be exported as well as the
resolution of the generated image in dots per inch. When ready, click the Save Image button to save the image
to a file. If you click the Copy To Clipboard button, the source code of the resulting SVG will be copied to the
clipboard.

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6.6 PDF
MyDraw makes it easy to export any drawing to PDF. To do so click File and then Export to PDF... The following
dialog will open:

The PDF export dialog lets you configure the page size and page margins and shows a preview of the export. You can
also specify the print layout that determines the zoom mode of the diagram. If the paging mode is set to "Fit To
Pages", you can specify on how many pages the diagram should be fitted. For example if you want the diagram to be
fitted on 1 page, set page columns and page rows to 1. If you want the diagram to be fitted on 6 pages, set the page
columns to 3 and page rows to 2 and so on. When ready, click the Export to PDF button to export the diagram to a
PDF file.

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6.7 Web Page

MyDraw makes it easy to export any drawing to an HTML Web Page. To do so, click File, then Save As and choose
Web Page for file type.
If the drawing document contains multiple pages, MyDraw will automatically embeds tab navigation in the resulting
HTML web page and each tab page in the HTML document will show a page from your original drawing. Pages are
exported in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format and are directly embedded in the resulting web page. This makes
it very easy to disribute or share, because you only have to copy/send a single HTML file.

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6.8 Visio Drawing

MyDraw provides support for both importing and exporting drawing to the most widely used diagramming
document format - Visio Drawing (VSDX) format.

Visio Drawing Import

To open a Visio Drawing in MyDraw:
1. Click the File menu
2. Click Open
3. Select "Visio Drawing (*.vsdx)" for file type
4. Select the Visio Drawing you want to open and click the Open button
MyDraw will then open the selected Visio Drawing.
If a given Visio Drawing does not open properly in MyDraw, please send it to us at [email protected]. This
will help us analyze it and fix any issues with it for the next version of MyDraw.

Visio Drawing Export

To save a MyDraw drawing as a Visio Drawing:
1. Click the File menu
2. Click Save As
3. Select "Visio Drawing (*.vsdx)" for file type
4. Enter the file name of the Visio Drawing you want to save to and click the Save button
MyDraw will then save the currently opened drawing as Visio Drawing.
If a given drawing does not export properly to Visio Drawing, please save it as a Nevron XML Drawing and send it
to us at [email protected]. This will help us analyze it and fix any issues with it for the next version of
MyDraw.

Importing and exporting of drawings in the older Visio format - "Visio 2003-2010 Drawing (VSD)" is also
supported, but it requires an active Internet connection.

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7 Special Diagram Types

7.1 Family Tree Diagrams

MyDraw lets you create family diagram with ease. You can either start with one of the included family tree diagram
templates or create a new blank drawing and drop a family tree person shape from the family tree shapes library.

Family Tree Shapes and Events

MyDraw comes with two special shapes that you can use to create family tree diagrams:
Person shape - rectangular shape that consists of 3 parts: photo (or gender based icon if photo is not
specified), name and dates.
Family shape - circular shape that is connected to the spouses and their children and contains the year
of the spouses marriage and the year of the divorce if they are divorced. When you place and hold the
mouse pointer over a family shape, a tooltip with the exact date and place of the marriage and the divorce
(if any) will be shown.
Family tree events are entities that include a date and a place. They are used in family tree shapes to describe events,
for example birth and death for a person shape and marriage and divorce for a family shape.

Editing Shapes and Events

To edit a person or a family shape double click it and a dialog for editing its data will open. For a person shape you
can edit the person's names, gender and birth and death events and for a family shape you can edit its marriage and
divorce events.
By default events are not set and are labeled as Automatic in the dialog. To create a new event click the
Automatic button next to the event, select Family Tree Event for type and set the date and place of the event. If
you want to delete an event, click it and select Automatic or None for event type.

Adding Shapes
To add a spouse to a person shape, right click it and select the Add Spouse menu option. A spouse with be added
next to the selected person shape and a family shape will be placed below the spouses and connected to each of
them. You can then click the family shape to add children to the family.
In case you need to build your tree in the other direction, too (i.e. from children to parents) you can right click a
person shape and select the Add Parents menu option from the context menu.

Arranging Family Tree Diagrams

Family tree diagrams are automatically arranged when you add a person shape through the context menu options,
but you can also layout them by executing the Family Graph Layout from the Layout Shapes dialog (it can be
launched from the Arrange ribbon tab). In this way you can configure the different layout options, including the
layout direction (e.g. "left to right", "top to bottom", etc.).
The following image shows a part of the family tree diagram of the US President Abraham Lincoln, created with
MyDraw:

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GEDCOM Import and Export

MyDraw comes with full support for importing and exporting family tree diagrams to the popular Genealogical Data
Communication (GEDCOM) format. For more information check out the GEDCOM Import and Export topic.

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8 Advanced Tasks

8.1 Editing Shapes

Add and remove ports

Shapes dropped to the drawing view from the library browser by default contain one or more ports, so you can
easily attach connectors to them. If you create a shape using the MyDraw's drawing tools or you simply want to
add more ports to your shape, you should right click the shape and select Shape Properties... The following
dialog will open:

The tree view at the left side of the dialog shows the shape children and the controls at the right side lets you edit
the properties of the item currently selected in the tree view.
If the shape does not have any ports, the ports collection may not be present, too and you will have to create it. To
do so, select the shape in the tree view and click the Add button (the green plus) in the toolbar placed below the
tree view. In the dialog that open select Ports (Port Collection) for child type and a ports collection will be
added for the shape. Then select the ports collection in the tree view and use the Add button to add one or more
ports to it.
When you add a port, the easiest way to configure its location is to select the "Relative" check box to make its
position relative to the shape bounds and then set the X and Y fields in the Location group box to values from 0
to 1, where (0, 0) denotes the top left corner of the shape's bounding box and (1, 1) denotes its bottom right
corner. For example, to create a port at the center of the right side of the shapes bounding box, you should set X
to 1 and Y to 0.5.
To remove a port, select it in the tree view and click the Delete button (the red "X") from the toolbar or press the
Delete key from the keyboard.

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8.2 Custom Shapes

MyDraw comes with a large library of predefined shapes, but if none of them is suitable for your latest diagram, don't
worry, because it's easy to create a custom shape that suits your needs. MyDraw provides several methods for
creating custom shapes:

Composing shapes
Shape composition is the process of combining the geometry of two or more shapes into one. To compose a
complex shape, create and position two or more shapes, select them either by Crtl+Click all of them or by
rectangular selection and then use one of the buttons in the Compose ribbon group of the Action tab page. The
image below demonstrates the result of different shape composition operations on a square and 4 triangles.

Drawing shapes
MyDraw also lets you draw shapes using lines, cubic beziers, arcs or freehand drawing (Nurbs tool). To draw a
custom shape, select one of these draw tools and start creating primitives (lines, curves, arcs, etc.) or create a
freehand drawing using the Nurbs tool. Each time you place the mouse cursor over the start or the end of a
primitive MyDraw will show a tooltip to remind you that you can extend the current geometry from this point. If a
primitive you are drawing closes a geometry at given point a tooltip "Close Geometry" will show to inform you that
at this point the geometry will be closed and a 2D shape will be produced.
You can use the "Edit Geometry" tool (the pencil) to modify the control points of the geometry primitives in order
to change the outline of the shape.

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8.3 Automatic Layouts

MyDraw comes with many automatic layouts that can help you arrange the shapes and connectors of your drawing
automatically in order to get esthetically pleasing results and more compact diagrams.

Layout types
MyDraw provides three main types of automatic layouts:
Box layouts - arrange only the 2D shapes of a diagram without taking into account the connectors.
Usefull when you want to order a bunch of not connected shapes in a tabular manner for example.
Graph layouts - arrange both the 2D shapes and the 1D shapes (connectors) of a diagram. Useful for
wide range of diagrams. Handles well and produces nice drawing of all kinds of connected diagrams.
Tree layouts - arrange both the 2D shapes and the 1D shapes (connectors) of a diagram. Can be regarded
as a special case of the graph layouts optimized for tree diagrams, i.e. diagrams in which each shape has
only one parent, except for the root shape, which does not have a parent shape.
The main type of the layout is indicated by its icon in the "Layout Type" combo box as shown in the image in the
next section.

Apply a layout
To apply an automatic layout to the selected shapes or to all shapes in the active page of your drawing click the
Layout button from the Arrange ribbon group of the Home tab. The following dialog will open:

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You can choose the layout you want to apply from the "Layout Type" combo box. When you select a layout a preview
will open to the right, so that you can get an idea how the layout will arrange your shapes. You can change the
settings of the layout from the controls that appear in the "General" tab page. All setting changes will immediately
reflect in the preview so you can easily see their effect on the layout.

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8.4 Drawing Templates

MyDraw comes with a large number of drawing templates, which you can use to quickly create nice diagrams. The
predefined templates are displayed in the "New Drawing" dialog, which opens when you start MyDraw or when you
click the New menu item from the MyDraw's application menu.

Load a predefined template

To load one of the predefined template select it in the "New Drawing" dialog. At the root level of the dialog you
can also select the options "Blank Drawing", to create a new blank drawing and "New from Existing...", to create a
new drawing from an existing one. For more information about this dialog, check out the New Drawing Dialog
topic.

Custom templates
If you want to create a custom MyDrawing template, you should follow this procedure:
1. Create a drawing as usual.
2. If you want, you can use the Predefined Libraries button of the library browser to close some of the
predefined shape libraries and leave only the ones related to your template opened.
3. Finally click the Save As... menu item from the MyDraw's application menu and save the drawing
as "Nevron XML Drawing Template (*.ndtx)".
Thus your drawing template will be created and at any time you will be able to use the "New from Existing..."
option of the New Drawing Dialog to create a new drawing based on your custom template.

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8.5 Inserting Barcodes

The Insert tab page of MyDraw's ribbon lets you easily insert 1D and 2D barcodes.

Insert a 1D barcode
To insert a 1D (a.k.a. linear) barcode, click the 1D Barcode button of the Insert tab. The following dialog will
open:

In this dialog you can configure the scale and the size mode of the barcode, its background and text fill, its
symbology and text. Note that some symbologies have strict requirement on the text of the barcode, for example
an EAN13 barcode can only have 13 digits (12 digits + 1 check digit).
If you enter "0123456789012" in the dialog above, the following 1D barcode will be created:

Insert a 2D barcode
To insert a 2D (a.k.a. matrix) barcode, click the 2D Barcode button of the Insert tab. A dialog similar to the one
for 1D barcode will open. It will let you configure the scale and size mode of the barcode, its background and text
fill, its symbology and text. MyDraw currently supports the following 2D barcode symbologies:
QR code

Data Matrix

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PDF 417

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MyDraw User Guide 52

8.6 Mail Merge

MyDraw makes it easy to perform mail merge in order to create many documents out of one template document.
You can either save the result of the mail merge to disk as different files or you can send the files by e-mail to
different recipients. The mail merge commands of MyDraw are placed in the Mailings ribbon tab:

Configuring Mail Merge

You should start by selecting a mail merge source, for example an Excel file. To do this, open the Mailings
ribbon tab and click the Select Recipients button. In the wizard that opens follow the steps to select and
configure a mail merge data source.
After you have selected a mail merge data source you can start inserting mail merge fields into the texts of the
shapes. Using the Preview Mail Merge button you can see the results of the mail merge for the current record.
To see the mail merge result for a different record, simply use the mail merge record navigator that is placed
below the Preview Mail Merge button.

Merge and Save

The Merge & Save ribbon button executes the mail merge operation, creates a set of resulting documents and
saves them to disk in a file format of your choice. When you click this button a save file dialog opens and you can
select the template file name to save to, for example "MailMerge.pdf". Then all generated documents will be saved
in the folder of this file with a suffix showing the one-based record index of the resulting document -
"MailMerge_1.pdf", "MailMerge_2.pdf", etc.

Merge and Send

The Merge & Send ribbon button executes the mail merge operation, creates a set of resulting documents and
sends them as attached files to e-mail messages to a set of recipients. When you click this button, a dialog for
configuring e-mail send options opens:

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Note that the mandatory fields are marked with an asterisk symbol. When you enter your e-mail sending options,
select the mail merge field that contains the e-mail addresses of the recipients and click the OK button. MyDraw
will then start generating and sending the e-mail messages displaying a progress dialog while they are being sent.

©2017 Nevron Software. All Rights Reserved.