Settings - General
The General tab of the Settings windows has the following sections, which reference the screenshot below.
Terminators and Connection Nodes
Terminators are the oval flowchart symbols used to designate the start or end of a process boundary. Connectors come in two types - On-Page and Off-Page. the On-page Connectors are labeled circles used to designate a jump from one part of the flow diagram to another. Similarly, the five-sided Off-Page Connectors are used to designate a jump to a process step on another page (assuming a multi-page flowchart). The available settings for these symbols are:
- Prompt to add an end Terminator: If this setting is enabled, FlowBreeze will prompt you to add a an end Terminator. The prompt window allows you to enter the text and select the location to place the terminator symbol. Note, when you click the Stop Flowcharting button FlowBreeze will scan the symbols on the drawing and look for any terminators already labeled "stop", "end", or "done". If it finds one, it will not prompt you to add another one.
- Generate On-Page Connector nodes for entries with 1 or 2 ALL CAPS characters: If checked entries such as A, B, AA, A1 will generate an On-Page Connector symbol.
- Generate On-Page Connector nodes for numeric entries: If checked entries such as 1, 2, 3, 1000, etc. will generate an Off-Page Connector symbol. If the Off-Page Connector field is unchecked, then numeric entries will generate an On-Page Connector.
Default Process Shape
This option allows you to set whether the default shape is a rounded rectangle or a regular rectangle (with squared corners).
Symbol Text
- Automatically capitalize first letter: Text like this - "sample entry", will become this - "Sample entry".
- Text Alignment: Set the vertical and horizontal alignment of the text.
- Prefix delimiter: Determines the separator between prefixes and text entries. See Prefixes and Keywords for more detail.
- Font: The font used for the flowchart symbol text. Tahoma 8 is used by default because it produces clear, readable text at a smaller font size, allowing more words to fit within a shape. Calibri and Segoe UI also are suitable fonts for clear, readable text at small font sizes.
Symbol Size
- Autosize symbol height if it exceeds default height: The heights set in the symbol list are minimum heights. If checked this will autosize the height. If you prefer to have fixed heights, it's recommend that you uncheck this box and set the heights in the symbol list to a uniform value.
- Smart Sizing for On and Off-Page Connectors: If checked, this will keep the connector node shapes as small as possible.
- Allow text to overflow shape: (Excel 2010 - 2015 only): If the text is too long to fit within the shape, this setting allows the text to go beyond the shape borders. Although this cannot be set in Excel 2007, if a flowchart is created in Excel 2010 or newer and viewed in Excel 2007, it will render correctly. This setting is lost if the file is saved as an Excel 97-2003 .xls format.
Spacing Between Shapes
- Sets the grid spacing between the shapes.