Click a classification or a connector type in the left panel and it lights up on the canvas while everything else dims back.
Where: Space Studio › Left panel › a classification or connector type · Canvas right-click › View lenses ▸
What it is
Highlighting is for seeing where something sits. Nothing is hidden, because hiding the rest would take away the very thing you're trying to see it against: whatever isn't lit simply recedes, evenly, behind what is. This is the Lens, the left panel's other job beside organising.
How to use it
Highlighting a classification or connector type
- Click a classification in the Left Panel. Its nodes stay bright, and everything else, connectors included, dims. Its tooltip reads Highlight: …, and a dot marks it as lit.
- Or click a connector type. Its connectors stay bright, along with the nodes at each end of them.
- Click more to add them. Classifications and connector types combine, so you see everything you've picked at once.
- Click a lit one again to turn it off (Remove highlight: …).
Lighting a classification dims every connector, even one running between two of its own nodes. That's deliberate, since "where are these?" is a different question from "how do they connect?", and lighting the connector types answers the second one.
Selecting a node
Selecting a node lights its connectors and rings its neighbours, so you can see what it touches, and dims nothing. Turn it off under Settings › Graph › Highlight connections on select.
Laying out around a highlight
Press Dark Energy [1] while something's lit and the lit nodes are laid out first and held still while the rest of the structure grows around them. See Dark Energy and Layers.
Lenses: arrange, cluster, highlight, filter
Right-click empty canvas and open View lenses ▸ for five more ways to look at the graph:
- Arrange by connector type: lays the graph out as a hierarchy along one connector type, and pauses the physics.
- Cluster by property: draws nodes with the same value of a property together.
- Highlight connector type: lights one connector type.
- Filter by status: dims every node that doesn't have the status you pick.
- Filter by property value: dims every node that doesn't have the property value you pick.
Pick one, choose its setting in the small dialog and click Apply. Each lens in use shows as a chip along the top of the canvas (Arrange, Cluster, Highlight, Status filter, Property filter). Click its ×, or pick it again from the menu, to turn it off. The filters dim too: nothing leaves the canvas.
Tips
- A route from Pathfinder lights up the same way and combines with a highlight, but Dark Energy doesn't lay out round it. Only a highlight from the left panel does that.
- Clicking a connector type does a different job when something's selected. With two nodes selected it connects them with that type, and with connectors selected it changes them to it. Click empty space first if you only want the highlight.
- Highlights aren't saved with the project.
How this helps you
- Use a classification highlight to see where all your Risks, or all your Clients, sit in the whole.
- Use a connector type highlight to follow one kind of relationship, such as where the money goes, through a tangled structure.
- Use a property filter to pick out everything marked "blocked", without hiding the context around it.
What it doesn't do
- It doesn't filter what you send out. A screenshot shows the highlight as you see it, but shared links, HTML files and Export for AI always carry the whole project.
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