The Problem With Pure Spatial Editing

GridDoc's spatial canvas is one of its defining features. You place blocks exactly where you want them — tables next to charts, formulas beside the text that references them, diagrams adjacent to the annotation that explains them. Engineers love this because it matches how they actually think about technical documents.

But there's a moment in every writing session when spatial freedom becomes friction. You're in the middle of drafting a methodology section. You have a lot to say. You don't yet know how long each paragraph will be or where the supporting table will end up. Positioning doesn't matter right now — prose does. Having to manually place and resize every text block while you're in the middle of a thought breaks the writing flow.

That's the problem FLOW mode solves.

What FLOW Mode Does

FLOW mode is a toggle in GridDoc that switches the canvas from spatial editing to a linear writing mode. When you activate it, the canvas behaves like a word processor: content flows top to bottom, blocks stack sequentially, and you move through the document with familiar scroll behavior.

You write normally. Paragraphs, headings, lists, inline code — all the standard writing tools are available and behave as expected. You're not fighting the canvas to place a cursor or resize a block.

When you're done writing — or when you're ready to start positioning — you toggle FLOW mode off. Your content returns to the spatial canvas, laid out sequentially where it was, ready for you to rearrange, annotate, and integrate with formula blocks and tables.

Nothing is lost between modes. Block content, formula links, tags, and revision history all persist through the toggle. FLOW mode is a view and interaction change, not a data transformation.

When to Use Each Mode

The practical pattern for most technical documents is to draft in FLOW mode and design in spatial mode.

Start in FLOW mode when you're writing a new section, drafting a narrative, or putting together a methodology where you know what you want to say but not yet how it should be laid out. Think of it as the first-pass writing environment — fast, linear, focused on content rather than position.

Switch to spatial mode when you're ready to structure the document. Move the derivation block next to the table that supplies its input variables. Place the result callout box to the right of the calculation that produced it. Add a Draw to Solve block beneath the equation you just wrote in prose. The canvas becomes the layout and connection tool.

For documents that are almost purely tabular — a data analysis, a budget model, a materials schedule — you may never need FLOW mode at all. For documents with substantial prose — a technical report, a specification, a design review — starting in FLOW mode typically cuts writing time meaningfully.

How FLOW Mode Interacts With Live Formulas

One thing worth understanding: live formula blocks work in both modes, but behave slightly differently.

In FLOW mode, formula blocks appear inline in the document flow. A SUM or VLOOKUP block sits in sequence with the text around it, like a table in a Word document. You can edit the formula, reference other blocks, and see results — but the cross-block reference lines that visually connect formula blocks to their data sources aren't drawn in FLOW mode.

Switch to spatial mode and those reference lines appear, showing exactly which formula is pulling from which table. For complex documents with many interdependencies, this is where you verify that the formula graph is wired correctly before sending the document for review.

FLOW Mode and Book View

FLOW mode is distinct from Book View (GridDoc's page-layout export mode). Book View is how your document looks when rendered for export or print — paginated, with headers and footers, formatted for a specific paper size. FLOW mode is an editing interface, not an output format.

The typical workflow: draft in FLOW → arrange on canvas → check formula connections in spatial mode → publish in Book View. Each mode serves a different stage of the document lifecycle, and toggling between them is instant.

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FLOW mode is available in all GridDoc plans. Try it free at griddocx.com — open a new document and use the toolbar toggle to switch between spatial and FLOW editing.