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ArchTect Docs

Canvas & DSL Editor

The canvas is the central diagram surface. Every view you open — whether authored in the DSL or auto-generated — opens as its own tab above the canvas.

Canvas showing a populated System Landscape diagram

Opening the DSL editor

Section titled “Opening the DSL editor”

Click the DSL icon in the left rail (or the “Open in DSL” toolbar button when available) to open a Monaco-based text editor as another tab, alongside your diagram tabs. It has the same syntax highlighting and autocomplete as VS Code.

DSL Editor tab showing syntax-highlighted Structurizr DSL source

Bidirectional sync

Section titled “Bidirectional sync”

Edits in the DSL editor update the canvas, and canvas edits serialize back to the DSL — but the sync isn’t fully live as you type:

  1. Type or paste changes in the DSL editor.
  2. Press Ctrl+S to apply the changes. This is what actually parses the DSL and re-renders the canvas — typing alone does not trigger a re-render.
  3. Canvas edits (dragging elements, editing Inspector fields) write back to the DSL automatically.
Section titled “Navigation”
Action How
Pan Hold Space and drag, or use the middle mouse button
Zoom in / out Scroll wheel, or Ctrl + / Ctrl -
Fit to view Ctrl+0 or the toolbar Fit button
Zoom to 100% Ctrl+1

Selection

Section titled “Selection”
Action How
Select element Click a node or relationship
Multi-select Shift+click additional elements
Select all Ctrl+A
Deselect all Press Esc or click empty canvas space

Selecting an element shows a floating action toolbar next to it (delete, style, relationships, more actions, rename) and opens its properties in the Inspector.

Canvas with an element selected, showing the floating action toolbar

Editing on the canvas

Section titled “Editing on the canvas”

Moving elements

Section titled “Moving elements”

Drag elements to reposition them. Alignment guides appear when the element aligns with others. You can also nudge selected elements with the arrow keys (hold Shift for larger increments).

Creating relationships

Section titled “Creating relationships”

Drag from one element to another to create a relationship, then edit its properties in the Inspector.

Deleting elements

Section titled “Deleting elements”

Select an element or relationship and press Delete, or use the floating action toolbar’s delete icon. Ctrl+Z undoes within the current session.

Layout

Section titled “Layout”

ArchTect supports multiple layout engines, set per view and saved in the DSL properties:

Engine Description
Default Built-in default layout
Graphviz Classic graph layout — good for dense, interconnected graphs
Dagre Directed acyclic graph layout — good for tree-like structures
ELK Eclipse Layout Kernel — hierarchical, layered layouts

Auto-layout can run top-to-bottom, left-to-right, bottom-to-top, or right-to-left. Select the layout engine in the Inspector when the view itself is selected (click empty canvas space to deselect elements first).

See also

Section titled “See also”