Authoring: Ribbon Drawing and Arrange Tools: Shapes, Connectors, Format Painter, and Layout
This section covers the Shapes and Arrange groups on the HQ VISU ribbon: inserting shapes, copying appearance, connecting objects, aligning, distributing, rotating, changing layer order, grouping, and ungrouping.
Check the selection before using an arrange command
Drawing commands can start without a selection. Arrange commands work on the shapes currently selected on the slide. Hold Ctrl and select each object before aligning, distributing, or grouping. Select inside a group, or ungroup it first, when only a child object should change.
- Insert a shape or connector: no selection is required.
- Align: select at least two objects.
- Horizontal or vertical distribution: select at least three objects.
- Group: select at least two groupable objects.
- Ungroup: select one group object.
Insert shapes, straight connectors, and arrow connectors
Open the HQ VISU tab and use ShapesInsertGallery for ordinary PowerPoint shapes. Use Straight Connector for an undirected connection and Straight Connector Arrow when the flow direction matters. Drag from a connection point on one object to a connection point on the other, then move both objects to confirm the endpoints remain attached.
- Frames, buttons, and status blocks: choose a rectangle, circle, or another native shape.
- Undirected relationship: Straight Connector.
- Flow or sequence direction: Straight Connector Arrow.
- After drawing, move both endpoints and verify that the connector stays attached.
Use Format Painter for appearance only
Select the correctly formatted source object, click Format Painter, then click the target. This copies PowerPoint appearance such as fill, stroke, font, and basic effects. It does not copy HQ VISU runtime behaviors. Use Copy Behavior and Paste Behavior in the Behavior Browser for that.
- Copy appearance: Format Painter.
- Copy State Color, Write Tag, or another runtime behavior: Copy Behavior / Paste Behavior.
- After painting, recheck the target object's text, component name, and behaviors.
Align left, center, right, top, middle, or bottom
Select two or more objects with Ctrl, then choose the required align command in Arrange. Check the result immediately. If PowerPoint used a different reference than expected, press Ctrl+Z, adjust the selection, and run the command again.
- A column of values: left or right align is usually useful.
- A row of buttons: top align or vertical middle is usually useful.
- Alignment changes position only; it does not equalize spacing.
Distribute objects evenly
Select at least three objects. Horizontal Distribution keeps the leftmost and rightmost objects in place and spaces the others evenly. Vertical Distribution does the same between the topmost and bottommost objects. Place the two boundary objects first, then distribute the full selection.
- Distribution does not run with fewer than three objects.
- Position the first and last objects before selecting the full set.
- After distribution, check spacing against the page edge and nearby content.
Rotate and change layer order
Rotate Left 90 and Rotate Right 90 turn the selected object by 90 degrees. Bring Forward moves it forward by one layer; Bring To Front places it above all peer objects. Choose the smallest layer change that fixes the overlap, so background shapes and transparent click targets do not move to the wrong level.
- Wrong orientation: rotate left or right by 90 degrees.
- Move across one neighboring object: Bring Forward.
- Place above every peer object: Bring To Front.
- Test visible overlap and click behavior after changing layers.
Group and ungroup objects
Select multiple objects and click Group to move, resize, or save them as one template unit. Select a group and click Ungroup to edit its children. Child behaviors remain, while template-root metadata or root-level animation is removed when it belongs only to the group root. Recheck template identity and root behavior after ungrouping.
- Finish the repeated device parts before grouping them.
- Before adding a behavior to the group, confirm the behavior should affect the whole group.
- After ungrouping, check child behaviors, names, and layer order.
- Reconfirm whether the result still needs to be saved as a reusable template.
