Managing Defaults for Future Designs

Understanding the Inspector and Preferences in Diagram Creation

When you want to make changes to settings of an object in your document, say the fretboard color, the number of frets shown on a fretboard or whether it's left handed, you do this using the Inspector.

The Inspector allows you to view and change settings for existing objects within a document

The Inspector is the area to the right-hand side of the editor.   It shows properties of the currently selected object, in this case a fretboard.   You can also select more than one object of the same type and change all their properties in one go.

Now what if you want every new object you create to have these same settings, so you don't have to change them every time in the Inspector?! Well, that's where the default settings in Preferences steps in!

Configure Default Settings in Preferences

When you create a new object, such as a fretboard or text box, it's created using the default settings defined in Preferences.

Once your object is created you can then alter these settings directly for that object using the Inspector.

All of these defaults customizations can be easily managed through the Preferences settings. It's important to note that any changes you make here will only affect future designs and won't alter those you've already created.

Preferences are the default values applied when you create a new object. They do not affect existing documents; this prevents your previously created work from looking different when reopened in the future.

Exceptions

Note and Interval Naming style preferences are global, meaning the current setting is applied whenever a document is opened.

A Word About Templates

These defaults are also used by the standard document templates provided in Neck Diagrams. So if you change the default fretboard background to have a wood effect then fretboards created on pages using those template will have that wood effect applied.

However this isn't currently the case for user-saved templates.

Setting Preferences

Accessing Preferences

• • Open Neck Diagrams
  • Navigate to the main application menu: Window > Preferences

If you are using a Mac, preferences can be accessed from the "Neck Diagrams" dropdown menu by selecting "Preferences..."

Adjusting Fretboard Settings

In the Preferences window, select the Fretboard page from the left-hand menu.

Customizing Template Defaults

• • Number of Frets: Adjust the default number of frets for your diagrams, whether vertical or horizontal.
  • Show Title and Footer: Toggle these options based on your preference. For cleaner diagrams, you might want to switch off these elements.

Saving Preferences

• • Once you've made your adjustments, ensure to save your preferences to apply these settings to new diagrams "Apply and Close"

Important note: Now, all the changes you have chosen in your preferences will be applied to every future diagram you start 📝

The list on the left contains the preferences that you can edit (click the chevron '>' next to the Fretboard and Text entries to expand and show their sub-entries):