A frame is a labelled, transparent box you draw around a cluster of elements to say "this part is a thing". It lives in the Build category in Diagram mode, and pressing F adds one (on a Draw-mode whiteboard, find Frame in the dock's Shapes flyout instead).
A new frame is 360 by 260, titled "Frame". Its body has no fill, so everything inside shows through, and its title sits inside the top-right corner. Rename it the way you rename anything else: double-click it and type.
If you want a backdrop colour, pick a Background in its Style → Colours section like any shape; the fill still sits behind the contents, never on top of them.
It is a section, not a rectangle
That distinction is the whole element. Five behaviours follow from it:
- It always draws behind its contents, whatever order things were added in. You never have to send a frame to the back, and one can't accidentally cover the work it is framing.
- Clicking inside picks the element, not the frame. Click an element in a frame and you get the element. Click empty space inside it, or its border or title, and you get the frame. So a frame never gets in the way of the thing it holds.
- Moving the frame carries what is inside it. The section travels as one, arrows between members included. Membership is worked out at the moment you grab it, so an element is "in" a frame simply by sitting inside it; there is nothing to add it to. What counts is the element's centre: an element straddling the edge travels if its centre is inside the frame and stays put if it is outside.
- Frames can nest. A smaller frame whose centre sits inside a bigger one travels with it, contents and all. An element inside two frames belongs to the smaller one, and frames that merely overlap don't drag each other along.
- Resizing the frame leaves its contents alone. Only the outline grows, so you size the section around the work rather than scaling the work.
A selected frame shows the quick-connect + buttons like any shape, so you can chain an arrow or a duplicate off a whole section. It is not something you can morph into another shape, though.
Arrows that pass behind boxes don't break around a frame: everything inside sits on top of it, so an arrow inside a section stays whole.
What else reads a frame
A frame is the one element other features treat as "a section", which is what makes it worth reaching for beyond tidiness:
- A slide with exactly one frame on it is framed by that frame when you present it, rather than by a box drawn round its elements. That is how you author precise framing for a slide deck without learning a second concept.
- Exports keep the layering, so a frame is behind its contents in a PNG or SVG exactly as on the canvas. See Exporting.
Frames and multi-selection
A frame and a multi-selection both move several elements together, and they are not the same tool.
A multi-selection is the set you picked just now, and it scatters as soon as you click away. A frame is a region, so its membership is whatever is sitting inside it right now, and dragging something in or out changes what moves with it. Reach for a frame when some elements should keep travelling together.
A lane follows the same rule as a frame: dragging it carries what sits in it, and resizing it doesn't.
Lay the frames down first and fill them in. A canvas that starts as four named empty sections is easier to write into than one you tidy into sections afterwards.
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