6. Layers and pages
Groups and containers#
Select two or more shapes and press Ctrl/⌘ G (or right-click → Arrange ▸ Group). A group container is created around them and they become its
children. Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ G ungroups.
Containers are real nodes with a kind of their own — group, plane, lane,
fragment, bpmnPool, bpmnLane — so they can be styled, morphed, layered
and routed through. Because they are backdrops, connectors are routed through
them rather than around them.
On a container the right-click menu adds:
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
Fit container to contents | Shrinks or grows the frame around its children |
Select children | Selects the subtree |
Remove from container | Detaches the selection from its parent |
Delete container, keep children | Deletes the frame and promotes the children |
Delete container and contents | Deletes the subtree |
Deleting a container with the keyboard asks which of the last two you meant. Dragging a shape over a container highlights it as a drop target and re-parents on release.
Layers#
Left panel → Layers.
Each layer has a name, a visibility flag, a lock flag, a paint-order position and an object count. The row expands to list what is on it.
| Action | Where |
|---|---|
| Add a layer | The panel, or the palette (Add layer) |
| Rename / delete | The row's buttons. Deleting a non-empty layer offers to move its objects to another layer instead |
| Reorder | ↑ / ↓ on the row — this is paint order |
| Hide / lock | The eye and padlock buttons |
| Move objects | Right-click a selection → Arrange ▸ Move to layer |
| Un-hide everything | Palette → Show all layers and objects |
A locked layer locks everything on it: the canvas refuses the drag and shows a hint. A hidden layer is not exported.
Objects also carry their own hidden and locked flags (Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ H,
Ctrl/⌘ L), independent of the layer.
Pages#
One document holds many pages. The page strip sits under the toolbar; the status
bar has a compact page selector (‹, a drop-down, ›, the count, and × to
delete the current page).
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Add | Toolbar Page, or right-click the page strip → Add page |
| Rename | The Rename button on the strip, or the page context menu |
| Duplicate / delete | Right-click a page tab |
| Switch | Click a tab, or use the status-bar selector |
Only the active page is live in the editor; the others are held as documents in the file. That matters for export:
- Plota JSON always writes the whole multi-page document.
- PDF can write every page into one file (palette →
Export every page as one PDF), and the export dialog has aPagesscope selector (Current page/All pages (n)). - SVG, PNG, draw.io and Mermaid are per page; exporting with scope
All pageswrites one file each.