[wolfman]

Hi. I just purchased Omnigraffle pro. All the samples are so polished, 3D, and have nice backgrounds. All I can muster are black boxes on white backgrounds. Are there easy ways to format the document so they look as nice as the samples on the website?

Thanks!:)

[Bill Van Hecke]

Hi wolfman,

You might try downloading the "Sample OmniGraffle Documents" pack on the OmniGraffle Extras page (http://www.omnigroup.com/application...raffle/extras/). Then you can select the various objects in each one and see how the inspectors are set up to give them their styles. If there's something that you still can't quite get, just let us know and we'll try to offer some tips.

[wolfman]

I did, and after a few minutes of playing around, I think I am getting the hang of it. Thanks!

[JKT]

Experiment with the fills, lines, and shadow inspectors. For the fills, choose the gradients options to achieve the two/three tone and hatched looks you can obtain. I've created a little movie of me messing around in those inspectors (it's a bit jerky and is heavily cropped to keep the file size down to ~ 20MB).

Click here to view it.

[Wim Lewis]

I also recommend using the selection inspector to help you try out different styles and looks while you're creating the diagram.

[wolfman]

Thank you all for those great starter tips! I think I am now getting the hang of it!