Windows Explorer-like navigation

For a better understanding of how you can navigate through your project data in articy:draft, let's have a look at the Windows Explorer.

It shows a hierarchical structure of the filesystem 1 and buttons for navigation 2 as well as the address to the currently displayed object 3. The main content area 4 shows the selected object in a special way, determined by the view settings 5.

In articy:draft, the navigation buttons and address are presented in the navigation bar (see below). The equivalent to the hierarchical structure in articy:draft is the navigator. The view mode for the content area can be selected via the view selector in articy:draft.

The articy:draft navigation bar

Each pane is equipped with a navigation bar at the top. Like the Windows Explorer, a pane shows a piece of project data in a specific way. The address to the currently viewed object is shown in the address field 8. The navigation buttons next to it let you move upwards in the hierarchy 6 and back / forth in the history like in web browsers 7. The "home" button takes you back to the jump-start page, very much like the home-page in your web browser.

Clicking the dropdown arrow 9 next to "bread crumbs" of the address brings up a popup 10 with the sub-structure, so you can easily submerge in the hierarchy only using the navigation bar.

The home icon 11 returns to the jumpstart

The "Navigator"

The navigator resembles the folder structure on the left of the Windows Explorer. Click here for details on the navigator.

Navigating via object references

You'll find the reference strip 12 in articy:draft's property sheets for example the entity's properties sheet and on nodes in the flow. You can place any articy object on the reference strip by simply drag-dropping them there. In the example above, the reference strip contains references to an asset/concept art 13 and two entities 14. You can navigate there by double-clicking the reference icon.

Keyboard navigation

When a node is selected, use ALT+Arrow keys to jump to nearby nodes in the given direction fluently.


Hit TAB to toggle between input areas and pins of a node, CTRL+TAB to continue from a text field. Then hit CTRL+RETURN on a pin to create following nodes.

Submerging / Emerging

It is important to know that flow fragments (and also dialogues) are containers for inner flow content. That means you can delve into them and model their inner structure, for example starting with "chapters" on the topmost level and climbing down to the level of individual dialogue lines.

To submerge into a flow fragment or dialogue, select it and click the "submerge icon" 15 in the tool bar. A symbol in the node's headline 16 indicates whether there is inner content (symbol visible) or not (symbol invisible). You can also double-click the node's inner content symbol to submerge into it.

Once you're submerged into a node, you see the inner content 17 surrounded by the parent node's box (dashed outline). The parent node's inbound and outbound pins are also displayed there 18 and can be used for navigation. Simply click them to jump to the connected node. The "emerge icon" 19 can be found above the top border of the parent box.

Selection

You can select all preceding or following nodes through the "Selection" entry in the context menu. This helps when you have to re-layout your flow.