Navigating the Canvas

The canvas is an infinite, zoomable plane. This page covers moving around it, selecting and arranging nodes, and the keyboard-driven shortcuts that make large diagrams manageable.

Pan & zoom

• Pan — scroll with the mouse wheel or trackpad, hold Space and drag, or drag with the middle mouse button.
• Zoom — hold ⌘ / Ctrl and scroll, or pinch on a trackpad. Zoom is cursor-anchored: the point under your pointer stays put as you zoom.
• Zoom controls (bottom-left of the canvas):
  • + / − — zoom in / out.
  • The percentage readout — click it to reset to 100%.
  • Fit — frame the whole diagram.
  • Zoom to selection — frame the selected node(s), or fit-all if nothing is selected.

A grid tracks the viewport as you move; nodes snap to the grid when dragged, and alignment guides appear to help you line resources up.

The minimap

The minimap in the bottom-right shows the whole diagram with a box marking your current viewport. Click anywhere on it to jump there, or drag to scrub the viewport around continuously.

Selecting & arranging

• Select — click a node (or an edge). The inspector shows its details.
• Multi-select — drag a marquee box across empty canvas to select everything inside it. Dragging any selected node moves the whole group.
• Delete — select one or more nodes/edges and press Delete or Backspace.
• Duplicate — select a node and press D.
• Group — select nodes and press G to wrap them in a new VPC.
• Connect — wire two nodes either in Connect mode (press C, click source then target) or by port drag (click a small dot on a node’s edge, then click the target) — no mode switch needed. See Getting Started.

The inspector’s right panel has its own footer with three layout actions:

• Fit to View — frame the whole diagram.
• Center — recenter the viewport.
• Tidy — auto-arrange top-level nodes into a clean grid (also in the command palette).

Containers & focus

Resources can nest inside containers (a VPC, a subnet, an ECS cluster). Drag a node onto a container to move it inside, or drag it out onto empty canvas to promote it to the top level. Containers pack their children automatically.

• Focus a container — double-click it to zoom in and dim everything outside. A breadcrumb at the top-left shows where you are; click an ancestor or the ✕ to step back out.
• Summarized leaves — when a container holds many resources of the same type, they collapse into a single “N× ServiceName” chip to cut clutter. Click the chip to expand the individual nodes.

Density & level of detail

The Density control (left panel) switches between Comfortable and Compact node sizing. Independently, the canvas applies semantic level-of-detail: as you zoom out, nodes shed their configuration details and then their labels, so a large diagram stays readable. The node you’re hovering or have selected always renders at full detail, and its direct connections stay lit while the rest dims.

Each node also shows a small colour-coded cloud-provider badge (AWS / GCP / AZ) in its header — derived from the service’s provider and mirroring the palette badge — so mixed-cloud diagrams read clearly. It’s hidden when you zoom far out (part of the level-of-detail shedding).

The command palette (⌘K)

Press ⌘K / Ctrl K (or / on empty canvas) to open the command palette — a single search box for almost everything:

• Run a command — zoom, fit, tidy, toggle edge style, switch density, apply a view preset, validate, export, and more.
• Add a service — type a service name and pick Add ….
• Jump to a node — type a node’s name to center it. If it’s hidden inside a collapsed container or a summary chip, Strata expands the path to reveal it.

Use the arrow keys to move, Enter to run, and Esc to close.

Keyboard shortcuts

For the full list of shortcuts and every command-palette entry, see Keyboard & Commands.