Working with plot frames

The following frame types are available for selection when you add a parent frame to the layout via the Plot Forms pane, or add a child frame to a parent plot frame via the Plot Frames pane.

You can also use the New Frame tool on the Plot Editor Ribbon to interactively add a frame to a layout.

Empty Frame	Empty frames contain no data and can be used to group other frames, or place an outline around other frames.
Image Frame	Image frames can contain raster images of many types. Useful for diverse tasks such as overlaying aerial photography through to positioning the company logo on a plot.
2D Plot Frame	2D Plot frames contain the data from a plot file created via the Plot | Generate Plot File function. Each 2D plot frame has its own scale, rotation and grid properties.
Vizex Plot Frame	Vizex plot frames contain the plot of a live Vizex view or a saved Vizex view. You can generate a Vizex plot via the Plot | Generate Vizex Plot function.
=Legend	Legend frames contain a legend for the data in a referenced plot frame. The classification of the legend is based upon the colour, hatch, or symbol sets defined for the data.
Table Frame	Table frames can be used to display the data extracted from a file or database in tabular format. To alter the appearance of the table, line and font styles can be applied.
Document Frame	Document frames can be used to display the contents of a document such as a text file or an Excel worksheet.
Text Frame	Text frames can be used to display a title, a note, or any kind of textual information.The text can be entered manually or imported from a text file. Replaceable text can be inserted by using the substitutions associated with a reference plot frame.
North Arrow (Symbol) Frame	North Arrow frames can be used to add a North Arrow symbol (or any symbol) to the plot layout.
Scale Bar Frame	Scale Bar frames can be used to denote the scale of the map data in a referenced plot frame.
Graticule Frame	Graticule child frames can be added to a parent plot frame to display the latitudes and longitudes of the geographic data in the plot frame.
Grid Frame	Grid child frames can be added to a parent plot frame to display local coordinates or the coordinates of a map projection.
Section Window	Section Window child frames can be added to a parent plot frame to annotate the plot, for example, so that it is clear which data in the plan view is shown in the section plot.
Annotation Frame	Annotation child frames can be added to a parent plot frame to annotate the plot. The properties of the frame are derived using Vizex annotation layer form sets. Annotations can be edited by selecting the annotation frame and clicking the Edit Labels toolbar button. This will enable all the tools on the Annotation toolbar.

Interactively select frames

The default behaviour when interactively clicking on a frame in an open plot layout is to navigate down the parent-child tree to find the lowest (usually the most visible) child frame.

This default behaviour can be overridden by holding down the SHIFT key while making the selection. The SHIFT key will restrict the selection to the parent frame. Holding down the SHIFT key and left-clicking multiple times will move the selection down the parent-child tree one frame at a time.

If you SHIFT and left-click and there is no lower child, the selection will bounce back up to the highest parent frame. This means you can hold down SHIFT and left-click multiple times to cycle through the parent-child frame hierarchy.

The CTRL key can be used to combine frame selections (provided that the selected frames share the same parent frame). Note that a CTRL click on a new frame that is not a sibling of an existing frame selection will clear the selection.

You can also select frames by dragging the mouse to create a selection rectangle.

You can only select frames that share the same parent frame.

Interactively move and copy frames

To Copy and Paste selected frames between the same plot, or between different plots, use Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V. You can also move or copy selected frames by dragging and dropping them with the mouse. However, you cannot drag a frame outside of its parent frame.

To create a copy of the selected frames, hold down the CTRL key as you release the mouse to drop them into position.

The reference frame is not updated. For example, if a plot frame and a scale bar frame are copied together, the copied scale bar will still reference the original plot and not the copied plot.

If you need to change the parent of a child frame, you can rearrange the hierarchy of the frames listed in the Plot Frames pane.