Overview

A page layout, or layout for short, is a type of window that you can use to compose pages containing:

• graphs
• tables
• annotations (textboxes and legends)
• pictures
• drawing elements (lines, arrows, rectangles, polygons, etc.)

Each layout can contain any number of pages and you can have as many layouts as memory allows.

Multipage layouts, new in Igor Pro® 7, can run in slideshow mode complete with presenter's notes.

Multipage layouts can be exported to a multipage PDF file.

Here is an example of a layout window:

A page layout has a number of layers. One layer, the layout layer, is for graphs, tables, annotations and pictures. The other layers are for drawing elements. Here are the notable features of page layouts.

• You can combine graphs, tables, pictures, annotations and drawing elements.
• Graphs, tables and legends in layouts are updated automatically.
• Complex graphs can be quickly and smoothly positioned.
• Layouts print at the full resolution of the printer.
• You can export all or part of a layout to another program.

There are two ways to add a graph or table to the layout layer:

• By creating a graph or table object. An object is a representation of a separate standalone graph or table window.
• By creating an embedded graph or table subwindow. A subwindow is a self-contained graph or table embedded in a layout window.

Layout using graph subwindows

Suppose we have three graphs showing some sort of related data; we would like those graphs in a page layout and to be arranged so that they are all aligned and occupy equal vertical space. That is a task that can be challenging using the traditional graph objects.

For this example, we have three graphs. All the axis ranges have been set to be the same, so they can be easily compared. We now want a page layout in which each graph occupies the same vertical space, and the axes are aligned with each other. We start from the New Layout dialog, select the three graphs, turn on the Tile checkbox and click Do It. The result isn't too bad: