Figures & diagrams

Publication figures usually force a choice: a GUI tool that exports pixels and forgets, or hand-written TikZ with no visual feedback. Oleafly’s diagram composer gives you both in one window, with a live compiled preview, and the figures it makes stay editable forever.

No API key, no network. This is a fully offline feature. (For AI-generated figures, see Draw with AI.)

Opening the composer

Click the Insert diagram button next to the compile button in the top toolbar, or run Insert a diagram (manual) from the search omnibar. The composer opens as a full-height window with your workspace on the left and a live preview on the right.

The Draw tab

A visual canvas for the common case:

• Shapes: drag out rectangles, circles, ellipses, diamonds, and text blocks.
• Connections: draw arrows and lines between shapes; they stay attached when you move things.
• Styling: fill, border, and text colors per element.
• Snap to grid keeps everything aligned; undo/redo covers experiments.

As you draw, the composer generates clean TikZ from the canvas. You get GUI speed with LaTeX-native output: vector shapes, and labels typeset in your document’s fonts.

The Code tab

A real LaTeX editor for the TikZ itself, with syntax highlighting and a snippet toolbar for the building blocks (rectangle node, circle node, arrow edge, line edge, scope). Start from a drawing and fine-tune the generated code, or write the whole figure by hand; the Preview button compiles exactly what’s in the editor.

If a compile fails and you have an AI provider connected, a Fix with AI button appears: it sends the TikZ and the compile log for a one-shot repair and recompiles. See Draw with AI.

The live preview

The preview pane compiles your figure in isolation, in its own build sandbox, so your main document is never touched by a half-finished diagram. You can adjust the PNG scale and choose a transparent or page-colored background for raster output.

Inserting

Give the diagram a name and pick how it lands in your document:

• Insert as code (vector): the TikZ goes straight into your document. Infinitely scalable, themeable, and diffable in Git history like any other source.
• Insert as image (PNG): an \includegraphics of a rendered figures/<name>.png, with your chosen scale and background. Right when the figure is heavy enough to slow the main compile.

Either way, the source is preserved as figures/<name>.tikz, and the name prompt warns before overwriting an existing figure.

Round-tripping: figures stay editable

Drawn diagrams embed their model inside the saved .tikz file. The composer’s Load button reopens any of them on the visual canvas, fully editable: move a box, restyle an arrow, re-insert. The same way draw.io ships editable exports, but with LaTeX-native output.

Save as project

A diagram can also become a standalone image project on your library shelf (the Save as project option, or start one from the Diagram / Figure template). Image projects preview as the figure itself, and their export menu offers PDF (vector) and PNG (raster) directly. Useful for figures you reuse across papers.