Organizing and Reusing Screens

This page covers everything above the level of a single Shape: combining several Shapes into one unit, turning any Shape or combination into a reusable template, the view and snapping options that make precise layout easier, and managing Screens themselves (saving, opening, exporting).

Group and ungroup

Select two or more Shapes and press Ctrl+G (or Edition > Group) to combine them into a Group. You're asked to name it. From then on, the Group moves, resizes, and rotates as one unit; its members (its children) keep their own relative position inside it.

Double-click a Group to drill into one specific child and edit it individually, without ungrouping everything else. Ctrl+Shift+G (or Edition > Ungroup) splits a Group back into its individual members; ungrouping only unpacks one level, so a Group nested inside another stays a Group afterward.

Turn on Vue > Show groups to permanently outline every Group with a dashed border and name tag; without it, a Group's own outline only shows while one of its members is individually selected.

Merge shapes vs. Keep outline

Both actions collapse a multi-selection into a single new Shape, but they do fundamentally different things, so pick carefully:

	Keep outline	Merge shapes
Result	One true, continuous outline: the geometric union of every selected Shape, with the seams between them dropped	Every original Shape's own look and position preserved exactly, seams still visible
Style	Inherits the first selected Shape's border/background/text (freely re-stylable afterward)	Each original Shape keeps its own style
Requirement	The selection must actually touch or overlap enough to collapse into one connected, hole-free outline	No geometric requirement at all
Reversible?	No: it's a genuinely new shape from that point on	No: it behaves as one atomic Shape, cannot be double-clicked into or ungrouped, same as Keep outline's result

Use Keep outline to fuse several primitives into one custom silhouette (for example, a rectangle plus a semicircle into a single rounded-top tank icon). Use Merge shapes when you just want several Shapes to always move together as a genuinely locked unit, with no ability to accidentally drill into one of them later, but without losing any of their individual styling.

Save as and the palette

Right-click any top-level Shape (or a real Group) and choose Save as to turn it into a reusable template, filed under one of the Add menu's own categories (Shapes, Control, Indicators, Machines, Connexions, or Other). From then on it shows up as its own tile, draggable or click-to-place exactly like a built-in primitive, in every Screen you open (this palette is stored locally, not per-Screen).

Right-click any of your own saved tiles for Export object (downloads just that one template as a JSON file) or Delete (removes it from your palette). Project > Export palette downloads your entire saved palette at once; Project > Import shape or palette accepts either a whole-palette export or a single object export, adding it to your own palette.

warning

"Save as" isn't offered for a Valve (it only ever makes sense attached to a specific Pipe, so a saved template would restore unattached and invisible) or a Picture placed via SVG import (its underlying data model has no matching field on a saved template).

View options

Vue menu:

• Grid / Dots: the canvas background pattern, mutually exclusive.
• Show groups: permanent dashed outlines and name tags on every Group.
• Show links: arrows from every dynamically-bound Shape to its source (see Dynamic Bindings and Notifications).
• Show names: a name tag on every Shape, grouped or not.
• Show dynamic values: shows a bound Shape's own live value as its text, instead of its static text.
• Show cursor position: a live coordinate readout as you move the mouse.
• Show rulers: horizontal and vertical rulers along the canvas edges.

Snapping

Also under the Vue menu, the Snapping section controls how a Shape being dragged or resized magnetically aligns against everything else:

• Alignment: snaps to other Shapes' edges and centers.
• Spacing: snaps to keep an even gap when a Shape sits between two others, or continues an already-established rhythm of evenly-spaced Shapes.
• Canvas: snaps to the canvas's own edges, center, and margins.
• Threshold: how close counts as "aligned", in canvas pixels.
• Grid: an independent, optional snap to a fixed grid size, only used on an axis the alignment/spacing/canvas snaps above didn't already claim.
• Rotation: snaps rotation to a fixed increment (default 15°) while dragging the rotate handle.

Hold Alt while dragging to temporarily disable every snap for that one gesture, without touching your saved snapping preferences.

Saving a screen

Project > Save screen (or Ctrl+Shift+S) opens a name dialog the first time, or an overwrite-vs-save-as-new choice for a Screen that already has one. The Unsaved status chip at the top-left of the toolbar (or Ctrl+S) does a quick, no-prompt save straight to the existing name once one exists.

Turn on Preferences > Auto-save to have OpSee quietly re-save the current Screen on an interval whenever there are unsaved changes, so you never lose more than a few moments of work even if you forget to save manually.

Project > New empty screen wipes the canvas and detaches from whatever Screen was loaded; Project > Open screen is a shortcut into the Screens manager below.

The Screens manager

Every Screen ever saved (shared across every admin, not scoped to whoever saved it) is listed on its own page, reachable from Project > Open screen. Each card shows a small preview, and lets you rename or delete that Screen. Clicking a card opens it in the editor.

Export and import a whole screen

Project > Export screen downloads the current Screen (every Shape plus its own view/snapping preferences) as a single JSON file; Project > Import screen replaces the whole canvas with a previously exported file's content. Unlike Save screen, this is a local file round-trip with no server involved, useful for backing up a Screen outside OpSee or moving one between environments.