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Frame | Substance 3D Designer

Frame icon

A frame eases the readability and layout of graphs, by visually grouping objects in that graph and letting you easily move all those objects together.

For instance, frames can be named and coloured so that the graph's structure comes out clearly when taking an overview, which is a great help as the complexity of a graph increases.

They can also be annotated and thus function as a documentation tool for explaining why some nodes were set up in a specific way.

In this page


Appearance

Depending on the position of the mouse cursor or whether it is part of a selection, a frame presents itself in different visual styles to let you know if and how you can interact with it.


Creating frames

Frames may be added in any graph type, in any of the following ways:

Framing selections

If a selection is active in a graph when a frame is created, that frame will be automatically adjusted to fully include the selected objects.

With that in mind, creating frames using a keyboard shortcut makes it even faster to frame content in a graph.

Frames: Creation methods

Tip:

When a frame is created, its 'Title' property automatically gains focus so you can immediately edit the frame's title.


Manipulating frames

Frames may be panned by dragging its title or header bar, and resized by dragging any of its borders or corners.

The illustration highlights the interaction zones for panning (blue) and resizing (yellow).

Frames: Interaction zones

Grid snapping

By default, a frame snaps to the medium grid when moved or resized.

Hold the Ctrl (Windows) / Cmd (macOS) key to shift this snapping to the small grid for finer adjustments.

Frames: Grid snapping


Properties

When a frame is selected, the following properties are available in the Properties dock:


Description

A frame can be annotated with a text that will be placed inside the frame. The text is aligned to the left and starts in the frame's top left corner. Use the frame's Description property to edit that text.


Inclusion rules

An object is considered included in a frame if it meets its inclusion rule. These rules vary according to the object and special case. They are listed below.

The yellow symbol in each illustration represents the point or area that needs to be entirely within a frame's bounds for an object to be included in that frame.


Fit size to content

Frames: Fit size to content

As you make adjustments in your graph, a frame may not be gracefully adjusted to its content anymore. In this case, it is possible to automatically adjust the position and size of the frame so it adjusts to the span of its content, with a padding of one medium grid cell.

To do this, click RMB on the frame's title or header bar – see Appearance – and select the Fit Size to Content option in the contextual menu.

Note:

The option is available if at least one graph object meets the frame's inclusion rules.

Fitting the description text

If the frame has a description, its is adjusted to make use of any empty space next to the description, if possible.

If no included object can be fit into that space, the frame's height is adjusted further to accommodate the description.

Frames: Fit size to content (with description)


Auto-expand

Frames: Auto-expand

As the graph grows, the frames' content may need to be rearranged. Nodes may shift to make room for additions or content may need to be spaced out more to promote readability.

To facilitate these adjustments, it is possible to automatically expand a frame when moving included objects: hold Shift at any point while moving an object to have the frame borders automatically adjust to keep that object within their bounds.

This also applies to selections that may include multiple objects. In that case, each object's host frame will be adjusted simultaneously.

If an object is not fully enclosed by the frame's bounds but still satisfies its inclusion rule, the frame is adjusted to fully enclose it with an additional padding of one medium grid cell as soon as the Shift key is pressed.

Note:

While the Shift key may be pressed or released at any point during the move to trigger or cancel the automatic adjustment of the frame, it must be held when completing the move to effectively apply the adjustment.

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