Build Figures

The Figures workspace is where you compose multi-panel figures for lab meetings, posters, and publications. Drop in charts from your analyses, microscopy images from your projects, or imported data, then arrange them in a clean grid with letter labels.

Workspace Overview

Open Figures from the left sidebar to see every figure in the current project. The landing page groups figures into bands so the ones you care about are easy to find:

• Starred at the top for figures you've pinned
• A band per layout (for example, "1×2", "2×2") so figures with the same shape sit together
• Folders for grouping by topic, paper, or experiment

Use the toolbar at the top of the landing page to:

• Search by figure title
• Sort by Last modified, Date created, Name, or Status
• Filter by status (Draft, Review, Final, Archived)
• Toggle between Grid and List views

Folders work like every other workspace. Click a folder to enter it; the breadcrumb at the top lets you jump back out. Drag a figure onto a folder to move it.

Creating a Figure

Click New Figure in the toolbar. A new figure opens immediately with:

• An empty title (rename it inline at any time)
• A 1×2 layout (two panels side by side)
• Uppercase letter labels (A, B)
• Status set to Draft

You can change any of these in the editor. The figure is saved as soon as it's created, so you can close the tab and come back without losing it.

The Figure Editor

Open any figure card to enter the editor. The header shows the title, the layout picker, the panel-label style, the status, and buttons for Undo, Redo, Slideshow, and Export.

Layout Presets

Figures use a grid layout, not a freeform canvas. Choose from eight presets in the layout picker:

Switching the layout never deletes a panel. Panels that don't fit the new shape are tucked into the editor's overflow until you switch back or pick a larger layout.

Panel Labels

Pick a label style in the header to control how panels are labeled:

• A, B, C (uppercase, the default)
• a, b, c (lowercase)
• i, ii, iii (Roman numerals)
• 1, 2, 3 (numeric)
• None to hide labels

Labels follow reading order: left to right, then top to bottom. When you rearrange panels, the labels update automatically.

View Modes

The editor has three view modes:

• Overview is the default. You see every panel at once in the grid and can rearrange them.
• Focused zooms in on a single panel for close work, including annotation drawing.
• Chart editor opens when you click into a chart panel to change its source data or styling. The data table appears inline next to the chart sidebar.

Rearranging Panels

In Overview mode:

• Drag any panel by its drag handle to swap it with another panel
• Click the three-dot menu on a panel to move it one slot in any direction (left, right, up, down). Directions that would push the panel off the grid are disabled.

Chart Panels

A chart panel pulls data from somewhere in your project and renders it as a chart. Click the Add chart button on any empty slot to open the chart picker.

From a Flow Cytometry Analysis

Pick From Analysis and choose a flow analysis from your project. Available chart types include:

• Stat charts for gated population counts, percentages, or medians
• Dot plots for scatter views of two parameters

The chart stays linked to the source analysis. If the analysis gating changes, refresh the panel to pull the new numbers.

From an Image Analysis

Pick From Analysis and choose an image analysis. Charts auto-generate from the saved object tables:

• Object count per image
• Area distribution of detected objects
• Brightness (intensity histogram)
• Confidence of the detection model
• Shape (eccentricity)

From a Project Table

If you've imported a CSV or built up a project table inside the app, you can chart it directly. Pick Project table in the chart picker and choose the table.

The chart stays linked to the table. If you edit the data inline in the chart editor, a Sync to table button appears so you can write your changes back to the source table.

Paste, Upload, or Type Your Own Data

For ad-hoc data that isn't worth a project table, pick Import data to open the data import dialog box. You can:

• Paste tab-delimited or comma-delimited rows from your clipboard
• Upload a CSV, TSV, or Excel (.xlsx) file
• Type values directly into the grid

This data lives inside the figure. If you want to chart the same numbers in another figure, save them as a project table from the data import dialog box first.

Link a Chart to BIOM Samples

When a chart is built from BIOM-format data, Conspecta tries to match sample IDs against samples in your project. You'll see a prompt asking you to confirm the link. Once linked, clicking a bar or point in the chart opens the matching sample card.

Image Panels

Click Add image on any empty slot to open the image browser dialog box. There are two tabs:

• Collections lists images from your image-analysis collections so you can drop in a microscopy field you've already worked with
• Upload accepts a PNG, JPEG, or TIFF dragged from your desktop

After picking an image, use the zoom popover to fine-tune sizing. The slider goes from 50% to 100% (fit-to-panel) in 5% increments. Image panels also accept an optional title above the image and a caption below.

Annotations

Switch to Focused mode on a panel to draw on top of it. The annotation toolbar gives you:

• Arrows to point at features
• Scale bars for microscopy
• Text labels
• Shapes for outlining regions

Annotations save automatically as you draw, with a short debounce. They stay attached to that panel, so resizing or reordering keeps them aligned.

Status and Sharing

Every figure has a status, shown as a colored chip in the header. The four statuses are:

• Draft for active work
• Review when you're ready for a teammate to look at it
• Final when it's locked in for the paper or talk
• Archived when it's done and you want it out of your main view

Click the status chip to change it. The status filter on the landing page makes it easy to focus on one stage of the pipeline.

The Activity panel in the editor sidebar shows the audit trail: who edited the title, layout, panels, sharing, or status, and when. Click to expand it; the history loads on first open.

Slideshow Mode

Click Slideshow in the editor header to present the figure full-screen, one panel at a time. Each populated panel becomes a slide. Empty slots are skipped. The figure title sits at the top of every slide, and the panel label sits in the top-left corner.

Use arrow keys to step through the slides. Press Esc to exit.

Autosave, Undo, and Conflicts

The figure editor has no save button. Every change writes to the server in the background, and the header shows a small Saving / Saved indicator so you know where you stand.

• Undo with Cmd+Z (Mac) or Ctrl+Z (Windows)
• Redo with Cmd+Shift+Z or Cmd+Y

Figure-level edits (title, layout, panels) and annotation edits (drawings inside a panel) have separate undo stacks, so undoing a typo in the title won't erase your last arrow.

If a teammate edits the same figure at the same moment, the server flags a version conflict and a banner appears at the top of the editor. You can Reload from server to take their version or Keep my version to overwrite. Conspecta serializes your edits to make this rare, but it can happen with simultaneous edits to the same figure.

Exporting

Click Export figure in the editor header to download a final version. The export dialog box lets you choose:

• PNG at 2× pixel ratio for slides, posters, and documents
• SVG for publications, journal submissions, and further editing in a vector tool

Set the filename (it defaults to the figure title) and click Export. The file downloads to your browser's default location.

Organizing Figures

Back on the workspace landing page, you can:

• Star a figure to pin it to the top
• Create folders to group figures by paper, experiment, or topic
• Drag a figure onto a folder to move it
• Select multiple figures with the checkboxes to delete or move them in bulk
• Delete a folder only after it's empty

Next Steps

• Analyze images to produce the image-analysis results you'll chart and present
• Flow visualization for the plot types that feed flow chart panels
• Share and export for project-wide exports beyond a single figure