Overview

The diagram view represents the tools and the connections between them for the currently selected model.

Top Buttons

At the top of the diagram there is a row of buttons looking something like:

Tapable text at top of diagram

Okay, they don't look like buttons, but in Math Minion if text is blue, you can likely tap on it to make something happen. In this case:

Bottom Toolbar

If the display is narrow, such as on a phone, the information view does not appear to right of the diagram and the bottom toolbar as described on the information view help page, will also appear on the diagram.

However in this case, the leftmost button will be labeled Info and tapping it switch to the information view, which in turn will have a button to get back to the diagram.

Icons

Math Minion expressions and other tools are represented by rectangular icons. With the exception of the icon for expressions, the icon contains two text lines. The first, in dark green, is the type name of the tool it represents, while the second is the user specified name of that instance. An expression icon has three text lines:

  1. The user supplied name of the expression
  2. The expression formula, often truncated to fit
  3. The calculated result of the formula. A red question mark will appear here until the expression has been evaluated. If the result isn't a scalar, only the first value will be shown, along with the array dimensions.

Different tool types also have different icon colors:

Image showing icon colors by type

A single tap on an icon will select it and present an information view for that tool. If the tool is a model, the diagram will immediately switch to viewing that model.

When a tool is selected on a sufficiently wide display, the information view is presented to the right of the diagram and the icons of other tools and their connections will be dimmed to highlight the current selection.

Tapping the selected icon will deselect it, as will tapping the back button at the upper left of the information view.

If a tool has notes, they will either appear below the icon as just the word Notes or with the complete text. In either case you can view them in a pop up window by tapping on the first line.

Connections

Connection lines are drawn from the corners of icons to the middle of a vertical side of each icon that references it.

The connections for the selected object are highlighted and will be shown in green for inputs and blue for outputs.

In the screenshot below, the weight and height expressions are both referenced by the BMI expression, so connections are drawn from the corners of each to the middle of a vertical side of the BMI icon.

Image showing icon connections

Note that BMI is selected, so the other icons are dimmed and the connections highlighted.

Panning

Drag the diagram background to move the entire diagram to a different position.

Zooming

Zoom the diagram with a pinch gesture or with the scroll control if you are using a mouse. You may be able to use trackpad scrolling (two finger) as well. Tapping on the + or - buttons at the top left of the diagram will also zoom in or out.

Rescale

Tap on the name at the top center of the diagram to rescale and recenter it

Moving Icons

To move an icon, just drag it around.

To move multiple icons, tap and hold on the background for a second or so and then release. A selection box will appear and you can drag its upper left and lower right corners until the objects you wish to move are all highlighted with blue text.

Now drag on the interior of the selection rectangle to move the selected icons.

Tap anywhere outside of the box to make it disappear.

Move operations can be undone with the Undo button.

Background Menu

Tapping once on the background will produce a pop up menu with the following options:

Close

Just closes the menu. Tapping on the diagram background has the same effect.

Add Expression

Immediately adds an expression to the model and shows it in the information view. Whenever a tool is added, its icon's initial position will be where you clicked on the diagram to open the menu.

Add Model

Immediately adds a child model to the model and switches the diagram and information view to it.

Expressions and models are the most common tools and earn a place on the main menu. The rest of the tools are listed in separate menus roughly divided into two categories based on their function.

Add Calculation Tool

A menu of calculation tools will appear.

Add Display Tool

A menu of display tools will appear.

Paste to Model

Paste the contents of a previous copy operation on to the diagram.

If the previous copy was of a Math Minion tool or group of tools, it/they will be added to the diagram at the point of the original tap.

If the clipboard contains an entire session, a new model will be placed on the diagram with its contents being the contents of that session's root model.

If you paste text beginning with a number or a minus sign, Math Minion will attempt to create a matrix containing the numbers. These should be comma separated and one row per line.

See the data table documentation for information on pasting Comma Separated Value (CSV) information to produce data tables.

If the pasteboard contents can be parsed as JSON, Math Minion will create a model and make a valiant attempt to fill it with expressions, models and data tables representing the JSON data.

If Math Minion can't otherwise interpret the pasteboard contents, it will create an expression, with a formula consisting of a single quote, followed by the text from the pasteboard. This will result in a string value.

Help

Display the help page in a new tab or window (depends on your browser settings).

Show Clipboard

This will only appear on browsers that don't allow access to the system clipboard.

To get around this, this menu option will display a view of the internal clipboard Math Minion uses instead. This is an editable text area, so you can select everything and copy it to the actual clipboard or conversely paste the actual clipboard contents in here for use by the Math Minion paste command.

It's clunky, but works. At least on the Mac desktop, either Chrome or MS Edge will allow actual access to the clipboard.

Note that pasting large multi megabyte data into the clipboard text area can be slow, so there is a button that allows you to import a file directly into the clipboard. The clipboard view is immediately closed and the next time it is opened, the imported text will be cleared and replaced with the normal clipboard contents.

Tool Icon Menu

Tapping and holding for a second or so on a tool icon and then releasing will produce a menu with the following options pertaining to that tool:

Delete

Deletes the tool.

Copy

Copy the tool to the clipboard.

Cut

Copy the tool to the clipboard and then delete it.

Copy as Table

Some tools, including expressions, matrices, graphs, iterators, ode solvers and of course data tables, have this command in their pop up menus.

When selected, it will copy a table value representing the tools results to the clipboard in a comma separated value format, with three definition lines prepended.

This can then be pasted back into a model to create a new data table, or exported to some other application.

Show Notes

If the tool has notes they will be displayed in a pop up.

Selection Rectangle Menu

A single tap inside a selection rectangle produces a menu with the following options:

Delete Selection

All the tools in the rectangle will be deleted.

Copy Selection

All the tools in the rectangle will be copied to the clipboard.

Cut Selection

All the tools in the rectangle will be copied to the clipboard and then deleted.

Tapping on the background outside of the selection box will dismiss the selection box.