---
title: Diagrams
description: Draw boxes and arrows inside a page, a ticket, a comment or a note — the tools, the limits, and what a diagram is and is not.
section: Wiki
order: 4
---

# Diagrams

A diagram is boxes, arrows and labels drawn on a canvas inside the document
itself. A flow through a system, an escalation path, the four services and which
one calls which — the drawing that usually ends up as a photograph of a
whiteboard pasted into a page.

## Draw one

Type `/diagram` in the editor and choose **Diagram**. The canvas opens over the
page.

- Pick a tool: **rectangle**, **ellipse**, **diamond**, **text**, or the
  connector.
- Drag on the canvas to draw a shape. Drag its corner to resize it, drag its
  middle to move it.
- Draw a connector from one shape to another. Pin an end to a side of a box —
  top, right, bottom or left — or leave it floating, in which case the line
  meets the box wherever it crosses it.
- Select a shape to give it a **label** and a **colour**, or a connector a label
  and an **arrowhead**.
- **Undo** takes back the last change. **Canvas** sets the width and height of
  the drawing.
- Save, and the drawing lands where you typed the command.

Double-click a diagram to open it again. Anybody who can edit the document can
edit the picture — there is no separate file to find, check out or re-upload.

`/diagram` works in every editor in Laver: wiki pages, page comments, ticket
descriptions, ticket comments and
[quick notes](/docs/wiki/quick-notes).

## Colours are names, not paint

The five fills — default, blue, green, yellow and coral — are names that the app
themes. A diagram drawn in the light theme is legible to a colleague reading it
in the dark theme, which a picture of a whiteboard is not.

## What a diagram is

Not a file. The shapes are stored in the document, which is what makes all of
this true:

- It copies and pastes with the text around it, including into a different page,
  ticket or comment.
- It is in the page's version history like any other edit.
- It never fills your workspace's storage allowance, and there is no attachment
  to lose.
- Shapes can be copied and pasted inside the canvas, or between two diagrams.

The other side of that: a diagram is a picture and the export formats are text.
Exporting a page as Markdown, HTML, ODT or PDF, or editing it as Markdown, leaves
the drawing out rather than flattening it — see
[Wiki pages](/docs/wiki/wiki-pages).

## Limits

|                       |             |
| --------------------- | ----------- |
| Shapes in one diagram | 60          |
| Connectors            | 80          |
| Characters in a label | 160         |
| Canvas width          | 160 to 4000 |
| Canvas height         | 120 to 4000 |

Past those a drawing is a document of its own, and it is better split into two.