Axure Tutorial: Manipulate Widgets

Well Joe
5 min readJul 29, 2022

by WELLJOE

Introduction

This article is a section of course Axure Full Course: Tutorial, Tips and Templates.

Widgets are the most important elements in Axure, and the manipulation of widgets is the core of using Axure RP. Mastering the skills of manipulating widgets can quickly improve the efficiency of design. Since it involves many details, we have set up a separate section to learn it.

Add Widget to Page

Drag a widget from the Libraries pane on the left to the canvas to add a new widget to the page.

Select Widgets

There are many ways to select widgets:

1. Select by dragging to draw the selection line with the mouse.

2. Click the widget to select a widget, then press the Shift key to select multiple widgets

3. Press Command(Ctrl) + A to select all widgets on the canvas.

Tips: When multiple widgets overlap, there are several ways to select overlapping widgets:

1. Click a widget with the mouse, click again after a while, and a widget behind it will be selected, and the selection will continue to cycle.

2. Right click the overlapping widgets and select the corresponding widget.

3. Select directly on the Outline pane.

Widget Shape and Rotation

1. Drag on the edge of the widget to change the size of the widget, hold down the Command (Ctrl) key at the four corners to rotate the widget.

Change shape

If it is a shape widget (Box, ellipse, button, etc.), right-click and select Select Shape… to change its shape.

Transform Shape

Right-click on the widget and select Transform Shape, you can do the following:

Edit Points: Can be used to change its shape. Similar to other drawing tools.
Curve All Points: Same as above, for editing endpoints.
Sharpen All Points: Same as above, for editing endpoints

Edit points

Flip Horizontal: Flip the widget horizontally.
Flip Vertical: Flip the widget Vertically.
Unite: Unite multiple shapes into one shape. A type of Boolean operation.
Subtract: Subtract the top-level widget and combine them, a type of Boolean operation
Intersect: Only keep all widgets for overlapping parts and combine them. a boolean operation.
Exclude: Exclude all overlapping parts and combine them, a type of Boolean operation.
Combine: Combine all select widgets, the combined widgets can be Break apart.
Break Apart: Break Apart the combined widgets
Reset Text to 0°: When rotating the component, the text will also be rotated, selecting this option will set the text to 0 degrees.
Edit Connector Points: You can modify the position of the connection point

Convert to Image: Convert a shape to an image.

Edit Widget

Common operations that can be replaced with shortcut keys, for example, use Command(Ctrl)+C to copy widgets, and use Command(Ctrl)+V to paste widgets

Cut: Used to cut the selected Widget(s).
Copy: Used to copy the selected Widget(s) and its style (only one widget).
Paste: Used to paste widget(s).
Paste Style: Used to paste style to the selected widget.

In Format Painter (Edit>Format Painter) you can set the properties copied to the clipboard.

Paste Widget Notes: Used to paste widget nots to the selected widget.

Widget Ordering

There are 3 ways to order widgets:

1. Right-click the widget and select it from the pop-up menu.

2. Order by clicking the buttons on the Style toolbar

3. By dragging the position of the Widget on the Outline pane.

Set Widget Style Effects

Right-click the widget and select Style Effect to open the Style Effects window.

There are six styles of Style Effects, which can be set as needed.

Since we have already introduced it in the previous lesson, we will not go into details here.

That’s all for today’s lesson, next lesson we’ll learn how to widget group.

If you have any questions and suggestions, please leave a message.

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