Cable ties

A patch grows cables. A cable tie gathers the ones that run the same way into one tidy bundle: they run straight and level through the tie, side by side, and fan out after it. Ties change how the canvas looks, never what the patch does.

Tie some cables

• Hold Alt and drag a line across the cables you want to tie. Let go: a tie gathers every cable the line crossed, at the place it crossed them.
• Or turn on the toolbar's Tie tool. While it's on, a plain drag ties, no Alt needed. Turn it off when you're done.

Ties hold both kinds of cable: wires carrying pictures and signals' cables going into jacks.

Move a tie

Drag a tie to slide it somewhere else on the canvas; its cables come with it. Move the nodes and the tie stays where you put it, its cables following. A cable that goes away (unplugged, or its node deleted) just leaves the bundle.

Take a tie off

Any of these takes it off, and the cables go their own ways again:

• Point near the tie and click the × that shows over it.
• Click the tie to choose it, then press Delete.

Ties for free

The toolbar's Arrange ties bundles for you as it lays the graph out: two or more cables leaving one output are tied just past it, and two or more coming into one node are tied just before it.

Making, moving and removing a tie are each one undo step, like any other change. Ctrl Z brings a removed tie back.