:promethean in 30 seconds

Another useful feature of ActivStudio is the ability to make a background grid invisible without switching it off. This makes it possible to align objects to a grid even when the gridlines are hidden.

If you want your gridlines to be invisible, select the cursor arrow and double click somewhere on the flipchart to open the Page Edit toolbox.

In the Page Edit toolbox, click on the Zorro Mask and watch the gridlines magically disappear!

While the gridlines are hidden, try arranging some objects with the Snap To feature switched on to see what happens. When you want the the gridlines to reappear, just click on the Zorro Mask again.

1 Comment

All background grids in ActivStudio initially start the same size and colour, but thankfully is possible to resize the grid and change the colour of the gridlines to one of your own choosing.

To resize the grid, select the cursor arrow from the main toolbox and double click on an empty part of the grid. The Page Edit toolbox will appear somewhere on the page.

In this toolbox, click on or to change the grid size.

It is also possible to change the colour of the gridlines. This is done by first right clicking on an empty part of the grid. If you are using the Quick Select toolbox you will also need to click on the button.

In the right click menu which appears, click on Grid Colour… and select a new colour for the grid.

No Comments

By far the most useful feature of background grids is the ability to make objects automatically ’snap’ to the gridlines.

Although this feature is initially turned off when a grid is added to add a flipchart page, it can be switched on in a few clicks of the mouse.

After adding a grid to your page as described here, select the cursor arrow from the main toolbox and double left-click on an empty part of the grid.

A small horizontal toolbox will appear marked Page Edit:

In this new toolbox, click the Snap To icon. Any objects and text on your page will automatically align themselves to the gridlines whenever you move them.

To switch this feature off, click on the Snap To Icon again.

No Comments

When creating flipchart pages, it is often useful to be able to automatically align objects to a grid. There are lots of different types of layout grid availble in ActivStudio, all of which can be found in the resource library.

To access background grids from the resource library, click on the Library icon in the flipchart navigation toolbar.

The library browser window will appear somewhere on the screen:

Before you do anything else, make sure the Library Browser window is fully expanded. You can do this by clicking on the arrows at the top of the window:

Now click the icon for the Shared Resource Library, then click on the Shared Grids icon.

A wide variety of backgrounds can be selected from the explorer panel on the right, including squared grids, isometric grids, patterns of dots, graph paper and musical staved notepaper.

Any of these grids can be used for aligning objects, but the basic squared layout is by far the most useful. To find square grids you will need to select X-Y Lined in the explorer panel.

Once you have selected a grid you want to use, simply drag it onto your flipchart page using the mouse.

No Comments

The basic range of colours in ActivStudio is not very wide, and also not often ideal for use with a data projector.

If you want to get the most out of your toolbox, a good starting point is to increase the range of available colours.

Start by clicking on the Promethean man in the top left of the main toolbox. A small system menu will appear. Click on Toolbox Customise, then Colours. Finally, click on 24 to expand the range of colours to maximim.

This will produce a larger colour palette with a slightly random selection of colours, including two identical purples. Thankfully it is not difficult to reorganise this selection by choosing your own colours.

This is done by simply right-clicking on the colour which you want to change, and selecting a new colour from the list which appears. Alternatively, click the    button to mix your own colour from scratch.

No Comments

Although there are only three basic Layers in any flipchart page, it is also possible for objects to be stacked on top of each other within the same layer.

For example, in the image below all the objects are on the Top layer, but some objects are stacked above others within this layer.

To move an object to the front of its layer, right click on it and select Edit, then click To Front. Similarly, clicking To Back will send an object to the back of whichever layer it happens to be on.

No Comments

An extremely useful feature of ActivStudio is the ability to arrange objects on different layers. Layers make it possible to place objects either in front of, or behind one another along the user’s line of sight, as shown in the diagram below.

Every flipchart consists of three main layers, Top, Middle and Bottom, plus the background layer. To move an object to another layer, start by selecting the Cursor Arrow from the main toolbox.

Right-click on the object you want to move to another layer. A small popup menu will appear. Click on Edit, then Layer. Finally, click on Top, Middle or Bottom to move the object to that layer.

No Comments

By far the most effective way of grouping and ungrouping objects is to set up a User Defined Button in the toolbox.

These are normally found in the resource area on the right of the toolbox, and look something like this:

These icons are customizable tools, meaning they can be assigned to perform a wide range of different functions… including grouping and ungrouping multiple objects

If for some reason these icons are not present in the main toolbox, they can be added from the Tool Store at any time.

Start by right clicking on one of the icons. A new window will appear titled Keystroke Definer, allowing you to change what the icon does.

Select Special Keystrokes from the three options on the left, then place a tick in the box marked Ctrl and select the letter G from the drop down list. If you want, you can also type the word ‘Group’ in the text box marked Tool Tip (this is the text which will be displayed whenever the mouse hovers over the icon).

Your window should now match the one shown in the screenshot below. Once it does, click OK to close the window.

From now on, clicking this icon will be the same as pressing Ctrl and G on the keyboard. If you want another button for ungrouping objects, simply repeat the process for the other icon and select Ctrl and U in the Keystroke Definer.

Try selecting a few objects and click the icon to see what happens!

1 Comment

The most basic way of grouping and ungrouping objects in ActivStudio is by going into object properties as described previously.

Although this method of grouping works, it’s not exactly simple or easy to remember, and neither is it quick to do in front of a class of pupils. Thankfully there are other ways which are much simpler.

If you are beside the computer, select the objects to be grouped and simply press Ctrl and G on the keyboard. It is also possible to press Ctrl and U to ungroup them again.

This still does not solve the problem of grouping objects quickly when you are standing at the whiteboard. However, help is at hand in the form of User Defined Buttons…

No Comments

When you create objects on the flipchart page, it is sometimes useful to group them so that they act as a single object. This is very handy when drawing diagrams or moving complicated objects around on your flipchart page.

The most basic way of grouping and ungrouping is to select the various objects you’re interested in, then double click on one of the selected objects to open the Object Edit toolbox.

In this toolbox, click on the icon of the red tick on the white page. This will open the Properties window for the group of objects you have selected.

Select Identification in the white panel on the left of the Properties window, then click to place a tick in the box where it says Grouped.

Finally, close the Properties window and try resizing or rotating your newly grouped objects.

To ungroup the objects again, go back and remove the tick from the Grouped box. Note that this will ungroup everything to its most basic possible level, meaning that handriting will be broken down into individual penstrokes.

2 Comments