- 3 minutes to read

C4 Designer

The C4 Designer is Nodinite's interactive canvas for creating and editing Architecture Diagrams. Where the View page lets you read, explore, and navigate a diagram, the Designer lets you build it — add elements, draw connections, reorganise boundaries, and bind shapes to real entities in your Repository.

Every change you make is saved automatically. There is no Save button.

Architecture Diagrams is part of experimental builds. This capability is actively evolving. APIs, UI, and workflows may change between releases. Contact your sales representative to enable this feature.

C4 Designer — O2C Production Deployment diagram open on the canvas

Two Pages, One Canvas

Every Architecture Diagram in Nodinite has two distinct pages built on the same rendering engine:

Page What you can do
View Read the diagram, inspect elements, navigate drill-through links, generate Dynamic diagrams, export, and print
Designer Everything in View, plus create and edit elements, draw connectors, manage boundaries, and control the diagram lifecycle

The Designer navigates to a /design URL suffix for the same diagram. Switch between them using the View and Designer buttons in the toolbar.

graph LR subgraph "View Page — Read & Navigate" V1[" Inspect elements"] V2[" Drill-through navigation"] V3[" Export & Print"] V4[" Dynamic diagrams"] end subgraph "Designer Page — Build & Edit" D1[" Drag shapes from Toolbox"] D2[" Draw connectors"] D3[" Organise boundaries"] D4[" Manage lifecycle"] end V1 --- D1 V2 --- D2 V3 --- D3 V4 --- D4 style V1 fill:#87CEEB style V2 fill:#87CEEB style V3 fill:#87CEEB style V4 fill:#87CEEB style D1 fill:#90EE90 style D2 fill:#90EE90 style D3 fill:#90EE90 style D4 fill:#90EE90

Diagram: Both pages share the same canvas engine. The Designer adds editing capabilities on top of the read-only View experience.

The Draft and Active States

The Designer introduces a two-state lifecycle that protects published diagrams from accidental edits.

State Description Designer behaviour
Active The published, approved version of the diagram Opens in read-only mode with a yellow banner
Draft A working copy you are actively editing Full edit mode — toolbox, drag-and-drop, connector drawing
Archived Retired diagram — kept for reference Read-only; no editing allowed
stateDiagram-v2 [*] --> Draft : Create new diagram Draft --> Active : Promote to Active Active --> Draft : Create Draft Active --> Archived : Archive Draft --> Draft : Continue editing note right of Active Read-only in Designer Yellow banner shown end note note right of Draft Full edit mode Toolbox visible end note

Diagram: The diagram lifecycle. A Draft is your working copy; promote it to Active when it is ready for the team.

When you open the Designer for an Active diagram, a yellow banner appears:

"This diagram is Active. Create a Draft to make changes."

Click Create Draft in the toolbar to begin editing. When you are satisfied with your changes, click Promote to Active to publish the new version.

What You Can Do in the Designer

The Designer is organised into a set of tasks, each covered in its own guide:

Task Guide
Pan, zoom, and navigate the canvas Navigating the Canvas
Add shapes, elements, and boundaries from the toolbox Building a Diagram
Group elements into Domain boundaries Organising with Boundaries
Draw and configure connections between elements Drawing Connectors
Edit element properties in the inspector panels Editing Elements
Link canvas shapes to Repository Systems and Services Repository Bindings
Manage the Draft/Active lifecycle and clone diagrams Diagram Lifecycle

From any Architecture Diagram's View page:

  1. Click the Designer button in the toolbar (only visible when the c4DesignerEnabled feature flag is active)
  2. If the diagram is Active, click Create Draft in the Designer toolbar before editing
  3. Make your changes — every change saves automatically
  4. Click Promote to Active when the diagram is ready

Next Step