Containers, swimlanes and tables

Three structural objects for organising a diagram: containers that hold shapes, swimlanes that divide a process by owner, and tables for tabular content. All three are on the Insert menu and in the ribbon’s Insert group.

Containers

Insert ▸ Container drops a labelled frame onto the canvas. Anything you drag inside becomes a child of the container: move the container and its contents move with it.

• Drag shapes in and out to change membership: the container highlights as you drag over it, and membership is reconciled when you drop.
• Select a single container and choose Arrange ▸ Fit Container to Children to resize it around its contents.
• Give the container a label by selecting it and typing, the same as any shape.

Note

A container is a spatial grouping: membership follows position, and the frame is a real shape that prints. A group is a logical one that ignores position and draws nothing. Use containers for “these things live in the payments subsystem”, groups for “these things move together”.

Swimlanes

Insert ▸ Swimlane, or the ribbon’s Swimlane gallery, inserts a lane set for process diagrams where each lane is a team, system or stage:

• 2, 3 or 4 Vertical Lanes: columns.
• 3 Horizontal Lanes: rows.

Each lane is a container, so shapes dropped into a lane belong to it. Label a lane by selecting its header and typing.

Adding and removing lanes

Select the swimlane, then:

• Insert ▸ Add Lane to Selection appends a lane.
• Insert ▸ Remove Last Lane from Selection removes the final one.

Both items stay dimmed until exactly one swimlane is selected.

Tables

Insert ▸ Table inserts a 3 × 3 grid. Each cell takes a label, so tables suit legends, RACI charts, comparison matrices and any structured block that would be tedious to build from individual rectangles.

Tables are ordinary diagram objects: they can be styled, connected to other shapes, moved into containers and included in a layout.