Resizing text when resizing objects

When Omnigraffle objects resize, the font size remains the same. Take a rectangle with Helvetica 13 as its font and resize it from 500x500 to 100x100, and the font will still be Helvetica 13. Usually, this is desired, but sometimes, it is not.

When it's not desired, resizing a large group with various different font sizes requires tedious, manual resizing of the fonts.

But there's a better way. A powerful feature of Omnigraffle is the ability to freely convert any object into a PDF object without losing the ability to edit it fully in Omnigraffle. And when PDF objects resize, their text resizes proportionally.

Below is a wireframe that has certain elements that you want to call attention to in the notation at the right. These elements were created at full size.



Having the called-out objects at full size takes up room needed for description, and sizing down the Omnigraffle group has the font problem mentioned above. So to create scaled-down versions with the text properly scaled, select the desired group or set of objects, and from the menu choose:

Edit > Copy As > PDF

This puts a copy of the Omnigraffle objects on the clipboard as a PDF object. Then, it's just a matter of pasting and resizing the PDF object. (You can also crop this image. See the post Masking and cropping cmages.)

Plus, you're not stuck with a static PDF: the object remains fully editable in Omnigraffle as native Omnigraffle objects. To edit the object, select it and choose from the menu:

Edit > Edit in Omnigraffle. (Or just double click it.)

This opens an Omnigraffle window that's a link-back instance to the PDF object in the document. Here you can edit whichever elements you want as native Omnigraffle objects and choose Save to update the PDF object.

Or, if your goal is to convert the PDF back into native Omnigraffle objects, you can simply copy all of the Omnigraffle objects out of this link-back instance, and paste them into your original document. Note that, however, these objects will be restored to their original size, regardless of how the PDF object was sized.