Custom Stencils

OmniGraffle OmniGraffle for iOS
#1

I have created some custom stencils that I use for diagramming on my Mac. Works great.

I have tried syncing these to my iPad Pro via OmniPresence to use with my drawings, but I don’t seem to be able to open the stencils on iOS (they work fine on macOS).

How do you load a custom stencil into OmniGraffle for iPad?

#2

From inside a document, tap the icon at the top left (Looks like a folder with an arrow, than tap on Locations (upper left corner again), you should see an option to Add OmniPresence Account. Once you do that, you can access your stencils from the same screen in Locations. Once you’ve opened a stencil from any synced location, when you are in a document and tap the +, you will see a list of Local Stencils, and if you scroll down you see a list of stencils under your Sync ID. If you’ve also opened files from iCloud or other locations, you may also have a listing of External Stencils where you can use the stencil content.

Alternately, if you would like to move all of your stencils on your iOS device once instead of keeping them synced, you can choose Copy From in the gear menu when you are in the Document Browser (Says Locations). The gear menu is on the upper right. This will allow you to copy over multiple stencils at once from any locations in Files you have showing on the device.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,
Lanette

#3

OK… I see one of my problems. Look at the attached images.

IMG_0004
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In the above image, I did as you suggested and copied my stencils from Dropbox.

Then, I navigated back to locations and then into Omni Sync Server, as seen below:

IMG_0005
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The stencils were gone! What! You see that little tab bar at the top? That is not visible, by default, until you SWIPE down (see the first image).

When I tapped on Show Stencils, I see this:

IMG_0006
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My stencils were there ALL THE TIME, I just never saw them because the filters were pushed above the top edge on my 12" iPad Pro.

Your UI team needs to revisit this interaction model :-)

I am still working on my second issue, which is: if I open a diagram to edit, how do I open a stencil and drag/drop an item into my drawing?

Thanks, Ken

#4

Your stencils are already there, so to use them when you are in a document, tap the button circled above. There will be a separate section with a header for the stencils that are synced if applicable (the arrow in my photo below). Then tap the stencil that you want to use, and the objects will appear. You can drag/drop them to the canvas, or tap the object you want in the stencil window to place it in the center of your view.

StencilMenu
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Anyone who is struggling to find their stencils for this reason, please send an email omnigraffle-ios@omnigroup.com with a request to show the pull down filter tabs in the resource browser by default.

Thanks for the UX feedback and for letting us know what the trouble was.

Thanks,
Lanette

#5

Thanks, Lanette. One of my issues was that I was running 2.9 instead of 3 - I didn’t know there was a newer version for iPad, but I appreciate that the update to 3.0 was free because of my recent purchase of the Pro version. That explains why I couldn’t find the (+) button to view stencils :-)

One more bit of feedback for iPad: add “View as a canvas” for stencils on iPad. It’s very difficult to find elements in a stencil using only the default “View in a grid”.