LucidChart News
New tools for complex diagrams
Since our last major release, LucidChart has added a handful of exciting new features that should help you keep your more complex diagrams organized:
- New "containers" allow you to outline logical sections of your diagrams easier and better than ever. Find them in their own section of the toolbox on the left of LucidChart's editor.
- You can now manually adjust the path your lines take on the way to their destination. Right-click a line and click "Edit Line Shape." You can click and drag the line into whatever shape you'd like.
- You have long been able to add text to lines. Now you can decide exactly where on the line that text appears. Just hold down the Shift key, and you can click and drag your text along the line.
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Now sporting Helvetica!
LucidChart is happy to announce another great update!
In this release, we've added perhaps the most-requested new feature: You now have the option of using Times or Helvetica fonts for part or all of your diagrams. You can set the default font for a document in the Properties tab, in the Document section.
You'll notice a new feature in the flowchart and org chart editor that makes drawing diagrams even faster than before. When you draw a new line out of a block on your page, it prompts you right there what you'd like to add as the next block in your diagram. (If this drives you crazy, you can turn it off in Edit->Preferences).
Since our last release announcement, we've made several improvements to the Properties panel that should make working with your documents easier. Just click Properties near the upper-right of the window to open the panel.
Safari users will probably also notice a big performance improvement.
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Minor software updates
Today we released a minor update to LucidChart that adds a few subtle user-interface improvements. Here are a few samples:
- It's now easier than ever to add text to lines. Just double-click on a line to add text to it.
- Want to move a whole section of your diagram at once? Double-click a block, and you'll select that block and everything "downstream" of it.
There are also a handful of bug fixes that you may or (hopefully) may not notice.
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Turbocharged LucidChart
Unprecedented Speed
Makers of complex diagrams, rejoice! The latest release of LucidChart has made working with large documents tens or even hundreds of times faster than before!
Just how much faster? See for yourself.
Full-Text Search
There is now a search box on your My Documents page that lets you perform full-text searches across all your documents.
If you enter more than one word to search for, you'll find all the documents with any one of those words in its title or contents. If you'd like to require words, you can put a + (plus) in front of them. If you would like to exclude documents with a word in them, put a - (minus) in front.
For instance, to search for all your documents that had the words "pizza" or "lasagna" in them, but not "recipe", you'd search for:
pizza lasagna -recipe
To find all your documents that have both the words "server" and "client" in them, you'd search for:
+server +client
Public Discussion Forums
If you have a LucidChart account, free or paid, you now have access to public discussion forums. Just click "Forums" in the upper-right of almost any page on LucidChart.
With your input, these forums will help guide the future development of LucidChart. If you're interested in having a new feature implemented, or if you have a bug to report, you're most likely to be heard on these forums.
Other Updates
Speaking of responding to community feedback, here are a few items you may notice in this release:
- Some users complained that it was difficult to drag around blocks that were nearly filled with text. You can now hold down Alt and click anywhere on a block to drag it.
- You can now delete your custom images by right-clicking them in the toolbox and selecting "Delete Image".
- When dragging blocks around a page, you have always had guidelines appear showing that the block was aligned with other blocks on the page. We've added those same guidelines for the middle of the page, vertically and horizontally.
- Printing a page (or portion of a page) to image or PDF now gives you a dialog allowing you to change the quality/size of the image.
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LucidChart has a new home!
We're happy to announce a major upgrade to LucidChart that took place last night!
New Servers, New Home
First and foremost, LucidChart has moved to a new home! It's now hosted in an environment that will allow us to grow quickly to support untold millions of users. It will also allow us to make much more frequent and reliable backups. In fact, all your documents will now be backed up to multiple data centers on an hourly basis!
Personal Subscriptions
Next, there is a new paid subscription level at only $20/year per user. It's called a Personal subscription, and provides the most-requested features of our Professional subscription (removing watermarks from PDFs and images, more storage space, etc), without the expense of some of the more corporate-oriented features like SSL encryption for all connections.
Software Updates
You'll find a handful of important updates in LucidChart's software itself:
- Document tagging - Organize and find documents quickly and easily.
- Share documents easier - The Share panel in the LucidChart editor has been redone at the request of many of our users. People you have invited to work on a document are now listed along with the people who have already accepted those invitations. You can even edit or cancel open invitations.
- Real-time collaboration fixes - Real-time collaboration was one of the most requested features of LucidChart, and was an instant hit. However, a few of you encountered problems with our initial release. We've worked with many of you to track down these problems, and we're confident this release will make your real-time collaboration speedier and more stable than ever.
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Major software update!
Today we released the most important update to LucidChart since its original launch back in December 2008. Here are some of the things you might notice, each with a quick video demonstration.
Real Real-Time Collaboration (Video)
You may now choose per-document whether you would like to share your changes only when you save, or in real-time. Find this new option in the Properties panel.
Document and Page Templates (Video)
Want to add your logo or copyright notice in the same place on every page of your document? How about every page of every document you'll ever make? Now it's easy!
Create a new document, and set up the first page with your logo or whatever other content you'd like to see on all other pages. Then open the Properties panel and click Document->Template For New Pages->Set To Current Page.
If you'd like the option to have this already set up for you in future documents, now click File->Save Template. Give your template a name and description, and it will show up as an option the next time you create a new document.
If you're a paid subscriber, other users in your organization will be able to share your templates, so you can standardize across your organization.
Don't like the new curvy lines? Just set the default new line shape to "elbow" or "diagonal", and save the document as a template. You'll then have the option to use your new settings every time you make a new document (see video for demonstration).
Autosave (Video)
Autosave was one of the most-requested features for LucidChart. Your changes are automatically saved as a draft, whether you're working on an existing document or a new document.
If you close the document without saving your changes, that draft is saved. When you next open up the document, LucidChart will ask you whether you want to restore your unsaved changes to the document. If you were working on a new document that you hadn't saved yet, you'll get this prompt the next time you create a new document.
Revert To Older Document Version (Video)
Did someone screw up your document? You can now use the History panel to revert to any earlier version of your document, or even "fork" out a new document from an earlier revision so you don't overwrite all those changes.
Curvy Lines (Video)
The most obvious new feature is the addition of curved lines. In fact, they're the default for new documents. If you'd prefer to keep your old elbowed lines by default, check out the video under "Document and Page Templates" for a cool demonstration.
All-New Properties Panel (Video)
A lot of functionality has been added to the Properties panel:
- Edit the properties of all your selected items at once.
- Adjust page size, orientation, and (new!) content size.
- Adjust document properties like real-time collaboration settings, the template for new pages, and default styles for new blocks and lines.
- Adjust the size of the content on a page, so you can fit more or less content onto the same 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper.
Drag & Drop Reordering Pages (Video)
You can now change the order of the pages in your document just by dragging around the page titles in LucidChart.
Copy & Paste Between Browsers (Video)
You can now copy content in one document and paste it into another. The only requirement is that you are logged in as the same user for both windows.
New UI Hints (Video)
The user interface for creating and editing blocks and lines has been updated to provide more information about what it is you're going to do. When you're creating or moving a line, the "link" points on all the blocks on the page (which you can stick the end of the line onto) light up.
It's now much more obvious when your line is going to be attached to a block.
Now creating or moving a block can attach it to the lines already on the page, so you don't need to reattach lines manually when you replace one block with another.
New Text Editor (Video)
The text editor for LucidChart has been completely rewritten from the ground up for speed, reliability, and compatibility. A new option for changing text color has been added. The text editor starts instantly, the restyling options never fail, and the style is reproduced more faithfully than ever in PDF and image output.
Other Changes
Some other updates don't translate to video well, but are worth mentioning:
- Most European characters are now supported in PDF and image output.
- Right-to-left support for Hebrew in PDF and image output has been added.
- Moving a line's endpoint away from a block it's linked is easier than it has been in the past, due to some tweaked UI settings.
- When you save your document, an MD5 checksum (except in IE, where a length-based checksum is used due to performance concerns) is sent along with your document to make sure it arrives intact. If you lose your internet connection in the middle of saving your document, your document will not be corrupted.
- General performance has been increased dramatically across the board, especially when working with large documents.