Portals

A ring of energy you link to another one, for jumping across a big canvas in one click.

A portal is a tall ring of energy you drop on the canvas and link to another one. Click it and the canvas jumps to its partner. It is the quickest way to move around a canvas that has outgrown one screen, and in Avatar mode you can simply walk your character into it.

Adding a pair

In Facilitate mode, open Session on the palette strip and choose Navigate down its side.

Pick Portal, then tap the canvas to drop one.

Right-click it, open Tools, then Portal, and choose Create Portal. A second portal appears beside the first, already linked to it and selected, so you can drag it wherever it belongs.

To link portals that already exist, pick one from the Leads to grid instead. Clicking the currently linked portal again unlinks the pair.

PortalNameBack to overviewLeads toPortal 2Portal 3 · Detail+ Create Portal
Two linked portals, and the Portal section of the menu: Name, the Leads to grid with a portal on another tab, and Create Portal.

Linking A to B links B back to A: whatever you can step into, you can step back out of. A portal leads to exactly one place, so pointing one at a new partner releases the old link at both ends.

Travelling

Clicking a linked portal centres the canvas on its partner. Dragging a portal never travels, so you can still move one around without being whisked away. If you are in Avatar mode, your character steps out of the far portal at the same moment, and walking into a portal does exactly what clicking it does, with no click needed. The portal you arrive in is ignored until you walk off it, so a pair never bounces you back and forth.

Across tabs

A portal can lead to a portal on another tab. Off-tab options in the Leads to grid are labelled with their tab name (for example "Portal 2 · Detail"), and travelling switches tab for you before landing you at the far side. It is the tidiest way to build a walkthrough that spans several tabs.

Naming them

Unnamed portals are numbered by their order on their tab (Portal 1, Portal 2, and so on; each tab counts from 1), so you can tell them apart in the Leads to grid without doing anything. Give one a proper name ("Back to overview") in the Name field of the same menu section; press Enter or click away to keep it. Names live in the menu and in hover cards: nothing is drawn over the ring itself.

An unlinked portal is dimmed and does not respond to clicks; its hover card says it is not linked. That is how you spot the half of a pair you have not wired up yet.

Recolouring

The ring takes its colour from the element's stroke colour, so the Border swatch under Style → Colours in the context menu recolours the whole effect. A classic pairing is one blue portal and one orange. A portal keeps its tall shape as you resize it; turn off Lock Aspect Ratio (see Size) if you really want to stretch it.

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