Frames and pages
Artboards, sections, auto layout and the things that keep a canvas tidy.
Frames
A Frame (F) is an artboard: a screen, a page, a card. Anything inside one clips to it, moves
with it, and can be exported or prototyped on its own.
Draw one with the tool, or pick a preset — phones, tablets, laptops and desktops, paper sizes, social sizes — from the inspector after you select the frame tool.
Frames nest. A card inside a screen inside a flow is normal, and each level can have its own layout and its own clipping.
Sections
A Section (Shift+S) is the level above frames: a labelled region of the canvas for grouping
related screens — "Onboarding", "Settings". Sections don't clip; they organise.
Auto layout
Auto layout makes a frame arrange its children instead of you placing them. Set a direction, a gap and padding, and the frame grows and shrinks around its contents.
Description
An empty canvas. F draws a frame and R three rectangles inside it, scattered. With the frame selected, the + of the Design panel’s Layout section adds auto layout: the scattered rectangles snap into a row from the frame’s top-left corner, and the Auto layout section shows the direction, resizing, alignment, gap and padding to set.
- Select the frame that holds the layers.
- Click + by Layout in the Design panel (or press Shift+A): its layers line up in a row.
- Set the direction, gap and padding in the Auto layout section.
Each child chooses how it sizes:
- Fixed — a number you set
- Hug contents — as small as its contents allow
- Fill container — take the space left over
That's how a button hugs its label while a card fills a column, and why adding a row doesn't mean nudging everything below it.
Constraints
Without auto layout, a child pins to its parent with constraints — left, right, centre, stretch, horizontally and vertically. Resize the frame and the child follows the rule.
Grids, guides and rulers
Layout grids go on a frame: columns, rows, or a square grid, drawn behind the content as something to align to.
Rulers (Shift+R) sit along the canvas edges; drag from one to place a guide. Objects snap
to guides like anything else.
The pixel grid appears on its own past 400% zoom.
Pages
A canvas file has as many pages as you like — add them with + at the top of the left panel and name them. Each is its own infinite canvas in the same file.
A print, slides, social or email file has fixed, numbered pages instead. Move
through them with PageUp / PageDown, and jump to the ends with Home / End.
Masters (A-Master, B-Master, …) sit in a row above the pages and hold the furniture that repeats — running heads, folios, a grid. Each page picks the master it follows, so changing the master changes every page using it.