A diagram is not a single canvas. It is a collection of tabs, each its own independent board with its own elements, layout, theme, and background. New diagrams start with one empty tab, and you add more whenever a piece of work deserves its own space. The tab bar sits along the bottom of the editor, and the active tab fills the canvas area above it.
What a tab is
Each tab is a self-contained canvas inside the diagram. A tab carries its own elements, its own theme and background pattern, and an optional lock, all independent of the other tabs around it. Common ways people split work across tabs:
- An Overview tab with the high-level picture, and detail tabs behind it.
- One tab per system, team, or phase of a project.
- A scratch tab for ideas you are not ready to file yet.
Tabs are ordered, and you can drag them to reorder them in the bar. The + button adds a new empty tab and switches to it.
Naming and reordering tabs
Tabs start with default names like Tab 1 and Tab 2, and you can rename any of them:
- Double-click a tab label to edit it inline. Enter commits, Escape cancels.
- The same rename action lives in each tab's right-click or ellipsis menu.
- Auto-rename on first edit: while a tab still has its default name, editing the label of its first element renames the tab to match. This only happens once, so later edits leave a renamed tab alone. A long label is tidied on the way across: runs of spaces and line breaks collapse to one, and anything over 60 characters is cut at the last whole word with an ellipsis, so a paragraph typed into a sticky can't turn into an unreadable tab.
Drag a tab to a new position to reorder it. Reordering only moves the tab in the list, it never touches the content on any tab.
More with tabs
Each tab also carries its own menu of actions, covered in their own guides:
- Tab Folders group related tabs under a named, collapsible chip so a long tab bar stays readable.
- Linking Across Tabs turns any element into a jump point to another tab.
- Add a Tab to Another Diagram shares a tab into a different diagram: it is the same tab in both places, not a copy, so edits appear everywhere it lives.
- Importing and Exporting move a tab's contents in and out as a file.
- Cleaning Up a Tab tidies a tab's layout in one click.
Tabs can be reused across diagrams behind the scenes, so a shared reference board such as a glossary can live in more than one diagram at once. Editing it in one place updates it everywhere.
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