A Lane is a wide band with a titled gutter down one edge, for cross-functional flows: a role, a team or a system per lane, with its steps laid inside.
It sits in the palette's Build category, beside Frame, in Diagram mode. Illustrate mode's palette leaves lanes out; add one there from the editor's Search panel if you need it. A new lane is 900 by 200, titled "Lane".
Dragging a lane takes its contents
Drag a lane and everything inside it comes along. That is the difference between a lane and a plain rectangle: a swimlane is a container, so moving the band moves the work.
The rules are the same ones a frame follows:
- An element belongs to a lane when its centre is inside the band. Something straddling the edge travels if its centre is in, and stays if its centre is out.
- If an element sits inside two containers, it belongs to the smaller one. A frame or lane nested inside the lane travels with it, carrying its own contents.
- Pinned arrows between elements follow them, and a loose arrow travels when both of its free ends are inside.
Resizing a lane is deliberately different: it resizes the band and leaves the contents where they are. A lane always draws behind the elements on it, so dropping one over a finished flow never hides it.
The title and its gutter
The title is an ordinary element label, so you edit, format and align it like any other. The tinted gutter is its backdrop and follows its alignment:
- Align the title left or right and the gutter runs down that side.
- Centre it at the top or bottom and the gutter becomes a band across that edge, which turns the lane into a column with a header, for a board of columns rather than a stack of rows.
Drag the seam between the gutter and the body to make the gutter wider or narrower. It snaps to the seams of other lanes, so a stack of lanes keeps its headings lined up. To recolour the gutter, right-click the lane and pick a Heading colour in the Colours section; left unset, it is a light wash of the lane's own border colour.
For a lane with its gutter down a side, Upright Title under the alignment grid (right-click, then Text, then Alignment) turns the title a quarter so it reads from bottom to top in a slim strip, the way draw.io and BPMN tools draw swimlanes. Lanes imported from draw.io use it automatically.
Stacking lanes
Lanes are placed like anything else and are not auto-stacked; snapping and the alignment guides make butting one under another straightforward. Flush lanes look right: a lane's outline is a single hairline, so two touching lanes do not double into a heavier line.
Build the flow first and drop the lanes underneath it afterwards. Because a lane picks up whatever sits inside it, sizing a band around a finished row is often quicker than placing the band and then working inside it.
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