Abstract: Managing diagram elements in a drawing becomes more challenging as the number of diagram elements increases. Placing a new diagram element in a drawing often requires manual movement of one or more other diagram elements within the drawing. Functionality can be implemented within a drawing application to automatically manage diagram elements in a drawing by applying layouts to sets of diagram elements. A drawing tool can associate a set of diagram elements and assigns them a exclusive area or region in the drawing space. Since a layout occupies an exclusive area, the drawing tool can manage the drawing space by automatically moving elements within a first layout when overlap with a second layout is detected. Managing drawing spaces with layouts reduces time spent adjusting diagram elements as a result of applying operations to other elements.

Abstract: Managing diagram elements in a drawing becomes more challenging as the number of diagram elements increases. Placing a new diagram element in a drawing often requires manual movement of one or more other diagram elements within the drawing. Functionality can be implemented within a drawing application to automatically manage diagram elements in a drawing by applying layouts to sets of diagram elements. A drawing tool can associate a set of diagram elements and assigns them a exclusive area or region in the drawing space. Since a layout occupies an exclusive area, the drawing tool can manage the drawing space by automatically moving elements within a first layout when overlap with a second layout is detected. Managing drawing spaces with layouts reduces time spent adjusting diagram elements as a result of applying operations to other elements.

Abstract: Users of drawing applications can utilize patterns to efficiently create diagrams as users tend to create similar drawings over time. For example, a user may create two use case diagrams. The first use case diagram depicts use cases for driving a car and the second use case diagram depicts use cases for driving a motorcycle. The use cases and structure of the diagrams are similar. Functionality may be implemented within a drawing application to determine a pattern from a drawing and create a new drawing based on the pattern. Creating a new drawing based on a pattern reduces time spent creating similar drawings because a user is able to edit the new pattern based drawing instead of creating the new drawing from scratch.