SelectItemsByPropertyValue - searches the map for items satisfying a search condition. This action is enabled only when there are no selected items.

To perform a simple search on the map, enter your search term, and the objects and property types you want to search on. In the lower part
of the dialog, select "Don't select" which will disable the advanced search.
Advanced search allows you select items of a given object type surrounding items matching the search query. This tool is useful when you have a large complex map and you need to
extract a subset of it.
There are two parameters you can use to control this search.
- The inclusion radius. This is the number of object types you have selected that you want on paths radiating
out from search hits. Setting this to 1 means that only the nearest desired items to the search hit will be selected. Larger numbers
will also select items that have another item on their shortest path to the search hit.
- The absolute distance. This parameter restricts potentially selectable items to being within n graph objects
of the search item.
Smart Editing Tools .
These tools are designed to help automate some laborious tasks in map construction. So far this is only
functional for
When using smart editing some properties may be temporarily changed, its best not to alter these properties
whilst in smart editing mode. These are shown in a table for each smart editing task.
Highlighting ambiguous actions
Following auto-layout, reversible reactions can be ambiguous if there are more than 2 reactants involved, e.g., in the following
reaction it is unclear which compounds are on which side of the reaction equation.

To highlight these cases on a map, select Smart Editing.. from the context menu. The following dialog appears:

Check the box to activate, and select the color you want. Any ambiguous reactions have the reaction and the links to the compounds
on the RHS of the equation highlighted.
Note : These changes will undo themselves when you either :
- Save the map.
- Switch off smart editing using the Exit Smart editor tool which is now active.
Using the example above, the following images results:

Affected properties
Object Type | Property |
Process | foreground color |
Process | background color |
output Link | foreground color |
Highlighting compound with noID
Affected properties
Object Type | Property |
Compound | foreground color |
Compound | background color |
Layout Algorithms.
When a graph is generated from an external text source or datafile it is laid out with a default spring layout.
Using the yfiles Graph tool from the editor context menu allows to alter some or part of the autolayout using another algorithm.
Just choose a layout type from the drop down box:

These algorithms are provided by a yfiles library. Only 'Organic' layout can truly layout a selected sub region of the graph. The other
algorithms generate a subgraph from the selected items, lay it out and put the resulting laid out items in approximately the
same area of the map as they were before.
These layout operations are undoable for maps with up to ~ 125 objects. For huge maps multiple undos may not be possible.
The following options are available to layout only parts of the graph:
- All. This will layout all nodes
- Selected Only the selected nodes will be fixed
- Unselected Selected nodes will have their locations preserved, all others will be relaid out.
- Fixed This option will only work with contexts that have a fixed for some graphical objects.
Items marked as fixed will have their location preserved. This is a good way to preserve parts of a manually laid out map.
Following layout the links may be disorganised - use the context menu action Layout Ports to reorder the ports.
Undo/Redo Tools .
This tool group comprises undo and redo actions, which are enabled after editing actions have occurred.
Editing Tools .
This group comprises:
- Delete which deletes selected items. Is enabled when at least one map item is selected.
Copy/Paste related Tools .
- Copy copies selected items, their child elements and labels to the clipboard. Is enabled when at least one item is selected.
- Paste pastes selected items. For paste to be enabled, copy must have been performed. Also, copying is at present only allowed between maps of the same context.
- Create Template provides a custom tool for pasting the current selection. This is useful
when you have a commonly used motif you wish to use in maps. Currently not fully implemented.
- Copy as Equation allows you to copy an equation from an EPE item to the clipboard.
To learn how this works, see the tutorial movie .
Miscellaneous Tools .
The following action are only enabled when a Process or BiDirectional Process is selected, and no other type. Some contexts
do not use these object types at all, so may never be enabled:
- Leash positions labels neatly around a process. Is enabled if only 1 symbol or 1 label is selected.
- Rotate Left/Right Rotates a process by 90 degrees.
- FlipH and FlipV flips the reaction symbols either vertically or horizontally.
- Fix/Unfix nodes for layout will set the "Fixed" property for selected objects in contexts that support it.
Port Layout
At present EPE does not support the dynamic placement of links into shapes , which often results in the links not connecting
to the closest place on the map. This tool is a temporary way to overcome this but works with the following caveats
- If placement cannot be calculated returns a Port location at the top-left hand corner of the shape.
- Only works for metabolic context.
- Snap to grid is expected to be on.
- Grid size must be smaller than the size of item whose ports you want to lay out.
- Only works reliably where shape size is a multiple of the gridsize, e.g., in metabolic context the compound default size is 16,
and grid size is 8.