Alignment Inspector

The Alignment Inspector is used to control the alignment of shape, polygon, line and text objects in relation to each other and to the canvas.



In the Alignment Inspector you can set the alignment point for objects, align objects vertically and horizontally, distribute objects vertically and horizontally, and space objects vertically and horizontally.

The object alignment point can be set by clicking one of the nine possible alignment locations. This point is used by the alignment buttons, smart guides and manual guides to specify which part of an object to align or snap to.

You can align objects vertically and horizontally with respect to one another by selecting a group of objects and clicking either the vertical align or horizontal align buttons. The icons for these buttons show which edge of the objects will be aligned. If Align to canvas is checked, the selected objects will align to the vertical and horizontal centers of the active canvas instead of each other as shown by the button icons.

You can distribute objects vertically and horizontally with respect to one another by selecting a group of objects and clicking either the vertical distribute or horizontal distribute buttons. For vertical distribute, the objects will be distributed between the top and bottom-most objects. For horizontal distribute, the objects will be distributed between the left and right-most objects. If Align to canvas is checked, the selected objects will distributed relative to the edges of the active canvas as shown by the button icons.

You can space objects vertically and horizontally with respect to one another by selecting a group of objects and clicking either the vertical spacing or horizontal spacing buttons. The value of spacing between objects can be set in the horizontal and vertical spacing text fields.

You can enter in the value of the spacing between objects in any of OmniGraffle's four unit types and OmniGraffle will automatically convert the value to your default unit type. The four suffixes you can enter after a value are: in (inches), cm (centimeters), pt (points), pc (picas).