Why Blocks?

A GridDoc canvas isn't a flowing page of paragraphs and it isn't a sheet of cells. It's a workspace populated with blocks — independently positioned, independently typed surfaces that you drop where you want them and connect through formulas, references, and proximity. Everything you create on a GridDoc lives inside a block of some kind.

Thinking in blocks is how you get good at the editor. Once you know which block type does what, building a calculation document becomes a placement decision, not a formatting fight.

The Block Types

The Insert tab on the ribbon is where new blocks come from. The list, in the order they appear:

• Calc Block — a sheet of cells with formulas, exactly the way a spreadsheet works. This is where SUM, IF, VLOOKUP, and cross-block references live. A document can have one Calc Block or twenty, each scoped to a specific calculation.
• Text Box — prose. Headings, descriptions, narrative. Drop it anywhere; it does not push other content around. This is what makes a GridDoc read like a document and not like a spreadsheet.
• Table — structured tabular data without the formula machinery. Use this for reference tables, parameter lists, summaries, and anything you want to lay out as rows and columns without engaging the calc engine.
• Chart — plots driven by data in a Calc Block or Table. Update the source values; the chart redraws.
• Diagram — schematic and flowchart shapes for architecture diagrams, free body diagrams, process flows, anything visual that isn't freehand sketching.
• Image — raster or vector image you've imported. Caption it with a Text Box next to it.
• Note — a structured callout for assumptions, references, or methodology — the things you used to bury in a footnote.
• Sticky Note — an informal annotation, the digital equivalent of a Post-it. Useful for review comments, TODOs, and "ask the client about this" reminders.
• Freehand — pen strokes on the canvas. Sketch a free body diagram, mark up a region, write the equation that Draw to Solve turns into a worked solution.

Each of these comes from the same Insert tab, and each behaves like a first-class object on the canvas — selectable, movable, resizable, and (where it makes sense) referenceable from a formula.

How Blocks Compose

The interesting part is what happens when you put blocks next to each other.

A Table of material properties sits beside a Calc Block that runs a member-design formula against it. A Chart sits below the Calc Block, plotting the result. A Text Box above the whole region explains what the calculation is doing and which code clause it references. A Sticky Note in the margin reminds you to confirm the load case with the structural lead.

That's a complete piece of an engineering memo, and every part of it is independently editable. Move the chart. Resize the table. Swap one assumption in the calc and watch the chart update. None of the blocks fight each other for layout, because no block owns the page — each one just owns its own rectangle of space.

Picking the Right Block

The shorthand most users land on after a week or two:

• Numbers that participate in a calculation → Calc Block
• Reference data you read from but don't compute on → Table
• Anything you'd write with words → Text Box for body, Note for callouts, Sticky Note for comments
• Anything visual → Chart, Diagram, Image, or Freehand

The blocks are the alphabet. The page is what you spell with them.

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Open a new document at griddocx.com, click Insert, and try one of each. The shape of GridDoc reveals itself the moment you have three or four different block types sharing a canvas.