Chapter VI: ADVANCED EDITING

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1: Making Copies

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Once you have created a collection of objects, it may be desirable to have other identical copies. There are two ways to do this: by duplication, and by cut-and-paste.

Duplication

The Duplicate command of the Edit menu makes a copy of the selected nodes and arcs. After issuing this command, an outline of the duplicated objects attaches to the cursor. When you click, the objects are placed at that location.

If you have disabled "Move after Duplicate" (in the New Node Options... command of the Info menu) then the duplicated objects are placed immediately without dragging. The advantage to this mode is that the location used to place these objects is intelligently determined by any previous duplications.

If any of the nodes have exported ports on them, these ports are not duplicated (unless the "Duplicate copies ports" is set in the New Node Options... command of the Info menu).

The Duplicate command forces newly created nodes and arcs to have unique names. This means that if any nodes or arcs are named (using the Get Info command of the Info menu) and then duplicated, the new ones will have different names (specifically, the old names with numbers appended).

Cut-and-Paste

Another way to make copies of nodes and arcs is with the cut-and-paste commands. The Copy and Cut commands of the Edit menu copy the currently selected nodes and arcs to a special buffer. Cut also removes the objects after copying them. The Paste command then copies the objects from the special buffer to the display. After issuing this command, an outline of the pasted objects attaches to the cursor. When you click, the objects are placed at that location.


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