Last winter I briefly highlighted Draw.io, a free flow charting tool comparable to Microsoft Visio (see that intro here). I use Draw.io pretty frequently, but I still haven’t written more detailed how-tos for Spatially Challenged. The interface is pretty user-friendly, so I didn’t think there was much worth a step-by-step article. Today is the first time I had issues with Draw.io with a weird work-around I wanted to share.
When you export a graphic from R, QGIS, or most other softwares you can pick the graphic size, resolution, and file format. I’m used to picking resolution by selecting DPI (dots per inch, learn more here), but that isn’t an option in the Draw.io export menu. Their default resolution looked fine for the flowcharts I’ve made in the past, but the one I made today was 3 times longer and looked fuzzy after exporting.
Instead of using the basic export option, I went to the Advanced tab (see left). This opens a new menu pop-up (see below). In this menu, change the zoom from 100 (the default) to 300 or 500 (depending on flowchart length). This proportionally changed the width and length, improving the readability of the graphic when I added the JPEG to my final document and sized it appropriately.
This was a fairly easy solution, but it seemed worthy of sharing since it was different from other software I use and have highlighted on this blog.
On a more personal note, this summer has been filled with manuscript writing about research I did at OSU and I’m starting a literature search related to my PhD work at UW. It’s been hard to find the motivation to come home and write lengthy blog posts too, so I’ve been keeping it pretty brief. Once we get into the semester that probably won’t change, but I will hopefully be able to share some cool R tips once I have more data to play with in the next few months. Thanks for being patient!
Spatially Challenged 