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Elements and nesting

Create generic elements, nest children, and collapse or expand any parent. Add catalog detail when useful.

AAL System Design 0.2 · Dictionary 0.2.0

Start with generic elements

An element has a stable ID and a name. It needs no catalog type or icon. Choose Add element to create New element immediately, with its name focused in Inspector. Select exactly one element and the action becomes Add child. Multiple selected elements or a connector selection create at the root.

Create a child

  1. Select a parent and choose Add child, or activate the + button on that element using pointer or keyboard.
  2. The child appears inside its parent. Ancestors grow as needed while unrelated positions remain unchanged.
  3. Rename the child in Inspector. Creation, placement, and expansion are one undoable operation.

Nesting and collapse

Every element can contain children, including typed elements. There are no provider, regional, namespace, or catalog containment restrictions. The first child gives its parent a boundary; removing the last child restores an ordinary element.

Use Collapse or Expand on any parent, including in presentation. Collapse hides internal connections and attaches external connections to the visible parent without changing their authored endpoints. Nested collapse states and expanded geometry are retained. Save/reload and project transfer preserve this state; image exports show the visible diagram.

Inspector’s Parent selector offers None and every element except itself and its descendants. Changing Parent moves the whole subtree. Adding a child to a collapsed parent expands it. Drag-based reparenting is not supported.

Optional type and icon

Use Choose type or Change icon in Inspector when additional detail helps. Clear type and Clear icon remove optional assignments while preserving IDs, names, children, and connections. A generic element does not need generic.custom. An explicitly selected type or icon must exist in the pinned dictionary.

Optional properties

Description, technology, owner, tags, and safe properties describe an element. Known catalog properties retain their declared value types. Coordinates, dimensions, collapse state, and connector appearance remain layout metadata outside AAL.