When a tab gets messy, you usually want one of two things: either everything is nearly aligned and you just want the drift gone, or the shapes and arrows never really got a layout and you want it computed for you. livedocuments has a tool for each, both in the command palette's Actions. They are complementary, not duplicates: one snaps the positions you already have, the other recomputes positions from how your shapes are wired together.
To straighten a single infographic or slide page instead, use the page's own Tidy button: see Working with Pages.
The two tools
- Auto-align is a grid snap. It rounds every element's size to a 10 px grid and lines shapes up by the edges and centres they nearly share, so near-aligned shapes become exactly aligned, small drift collapses, and nothing moves far. See Auto-Align.
- Auto Layout ("tidy up" in the command palette) reads the arrow graph and computes brand-new positions, laying out connected shapes into clean layers, or into a style you pick: layered (down or right), tree, or radial. It can legitimately move an element a long way. See Auto Layout.
How to run them
Open the command palette (⌘K / Ctrl+K), type Auto Layout or Auto-align, and pick the tidier you want under Actions. Both run on the whole active tab as a single undoable step, so if the result isn't what you hoped, one undo puts everything back exactly as it was.
The tidiers are for editors: they aren't offered to a participant or in a view-only session, and they leave a locked tab alone, so unlock the tab first. Inside an unlocked tab, a locked element stays exactly where it is.
Neither tool will trash your work. Each one is tried before it runs, and one that would change nothing or cover a shape leaves everything where it is, with a short notice saying why. See When a style isn't offered.
Both tools work entirely offline and deterministically. They never call out to anything, so they are always available.
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