While freehand drawing, tapping the canvas area will switch modes, making it easier to pan around the playpen. In this mode, you can also draw a link from one concept to another. Rather than drawing a shape, simply draw a line from a starting concept to an ending concept.

By default, links go one way, indicated by an arrow pointing toward the ending concept.

If there are many concepts visible at once, you can draw multiple links with a single gesture. After a brief wait at the ’ending’ concept, you will see the two concepts linked, and a new link appear, ready to connect with another concept.

Once a gesture is done, a text input will appear – one by one – for each drawn link. You may use it to specify how the linked concepts are connected. Using one of the options suggested as you type makes it easier to find different concepts which are similarly related to each-other.

Keyboard

When creating multiple links, it can be helpful to have gaps in a ‘chain’. When not all concepts encountered in a gesture are linked, try the Tab key shortcut:

Tapped during the brief delay hovering over a concept (before it becomes an ’ending’ concept) you can make it a ‘starting’ concept for the next link.

If you want to draw links without even leaving the keyboard, take a look at the guide to tagging.

Briefly, on tagging…

While at its most flexible on the keyboard, tagging gives another way to link by mouse. You can also tag concepts by bringing up their context menu. The two most recently tagged concepts can then be linked using the canvas context menu. With the link pointing to the most recent one.

Creating Linked Concepts

New ideas often start unlinked. Holding Shift while a new concept is drawn or placed will automatically create links from any selected concept(s) to the new one. Alt-Shift instead will create links in the reverse direction, from the new concept to the selected.

A natural extension of this is to create concept ‘chains’.