Using the Picture Browser to add pictures to diagrams

Available from the View menu, the Picture Browser option opens a dockable pane which can be used to draw pictures on diagrams.

By default it shows pictures from the encyclopedia’s Images folder.

In the normal mode of operation, you select a file to get a preview of it in the diagram Preview window and trigger picture drawing mode using the file as a referenced image.

There is a splitter bar at the bottom of the window which you can drag up. Having done so, selecting a file will present the preview image there instead of updating the Diagram Preview pane. The position of this splitter is remembered.

A number of filter options are offered. You must press the Refresh button after updating the filter controls to update the list of images.

You can drop down a check-list of the located file extensions which System Architect supports as pictures by pressing the down-arrow to the right of the Pick extensions label.

The Name box offers a contains-type search.

The folder drop-list contains all located encyclopedia folders and offers a folder-based search.

Pressing the ... button leads to a folder selection dialog for picking a Windows folder.

After selecting a folder, that directory is selected and is available in the Folder drop-list. This is the view after pressing Refresh:

With Reference ticked, selecting a file will cause picture drawing mode to be entered with the file as a reference.

Note System Architect sessions started by other users will only locate and use that image file if it is available at the same location on their system.

Unticking the Reference box means that the user will be prompted on pressing Add, as if the file had been dropped onto the diagram after dragging it from the Windows folder.

Copying creates a unique P-prefixed image folder in the root encyclopedia folder for each picture placed on the diagram from the chosen file. Import imports the file.

As normal in Windows applications, you can switch keyboard focus by using the Tab and Shift+Tab key combinations.

After moving focus to the Pick extensions button and pressing Space, the list will drop-down but you need to use the cursor-down key to move focus to items in the list before you can press Space to toggle selections, or press Escape to close the list.