Shape Styles

Shape styles are a defined group of settings that can be applied to branches and shapes to change the way they look. This can include things like line colors and line styles, fonts, and fill colors.

Shape styles allow you to set the background image, background color, branch coloring, layout mode, outline numbering and various other settings with a single action.

NovaMind comes with a number of shape styles built in, but you can edit these, and create your own styles. Each shape style may set some or all of the attributes mentioned above - these settings are defined when the style is created.

To apply a shape Style

Select the branches and shapes you want to alter, and use the shape Style gallery to select the style you want to use.

Note that if you want to apply a style to a boundary, you will need to click on the boundary to select it. You can still have other shapes in the selection by control-clicking on them.

The Shape Style Browser

In the style gallery, you can click on the down arrow with the line above it to pop up the full gallery and menu options. There you will see the option to Browse Styles. When you select this option, a browser like this will appear:

Initially, the option "No Filter" will be selected, but you can select whether you want to browse background styles or graphic (shape) styles, and whether to filter by theme. If you want to filter by theme and only show the styles as defined in the themes, you can click on a single theme or Control + click to select multiple themes as shown in the example above.

You can then apply styles to the selected shapes. Note that as this is a floating dialog, you can leave it showing if you like and use the styles as you format your Mind Map.

Creating Your Own Styles

In the style gallery, you can click on the down arrow with the line above it to pop up the full gallery and menu options. There you will see the option to Edit Styles. When you select this option, the content of the window will be changed to look like this:

If you want to start your definition from an existing style, select it from the style gallery or from the style browser. If you want to start from scratch, click the New Style button.

You can then use all the formatting options to change the settings of the shape, line styles, fill settings and fonts etc to be exactly what you want.

The checkboxes indicate the elements of the style that will actually be applied to the shapes when you apply the style. For instance, if you have the branch type set to line branch, and don't check the Apply Branch Type checkbox, and then apply the style to a rectangle branch, then it will remain a rectangle branch. If, however, you did check the Apply Branch Type checkbox, then when you apply the style to a rectangle branch, it will turn it into a line branch. The same concept applies to all the other settings.

Once you have defined the style, you can save it as a new style, and it will appear in your style gallery for use as you build your Mind Maps. If you find that it is not doing what you want it to, you can come into the editor again, and select the style in the browser, and edit it. Then you would just click on the Save button to update the style.

When you have finished defining your styles, click on the Close Style Editor command.

To delete a shape Style

Select the style you want to delete in the styles browser and click the Delete Style button.