Using Layers in Dia

Lesson 5 / Lesson 7

In Dia, users are working with a canvas object, layer objects, and diagramming element objects. The layer objects are just like a sheet of transparent paper sitting on top of the canvas. Each la yer caninclude its own diagram elements. Each diagram consists of at least one layer and can include as many layers as needed to complete the diagram.

To view your layers click on Diagram Layers.

The layers window lets us first choose the diagram we're working on. Below this we can see the stack of layers and at the bottom add, up, down and delete buttons.

After adding a new layer names "products" you can see it's been added to our layer stack.

Remeber that you can control the order of the diagramming element objects by setting them in the correct order. If we wanted to re-arrange the objects below so that the green sales topic was in behind the product line topic we could do that by sending the sales topic backwards.

You can do this by clicking on Object in the top menu. You'll then see options to Send to Back, Bring to Front, Send Backwards, Bring Forwards

You can see the result is the sales topic is now in the back