Connectors & Routing
Connectors are the edges that link your nodes together, establishing the flow of data, relationships, or dependencies in your architecture.
Connecting Nodes
Every node has Handles—small connection points located on the top, bottom, left, and right edges of the node. These handles appear when you hover over a selected node.
To connect two nodes:
- Hover over the source node to reveal its handles.
- Click and drag from a handle.
- Drop the connection onto a handle of the target node.
Smart Routing
Rekhic connectors use smart routing. Instead of drawing a straight diagonal line that crosses over other components chaotically, the connectors automatically route themselves using right angles, avoiding collisions where possible to keep your diagrams clean and readable.
Customizing Connectors
When you click on a connector, a context menu appears allowing you to customize its appearance:
- Arrowheads: You can add arrowheads to the source, the target, both, or neither to indicate data flow direction.
- Line Style: Choose between Solid lines (typically for synchronous requests or hard dependencies) and Dashed lines (typically for asynchronous events, messaging, or soft dependencies).
- Stroke: Customize the thickness and color of the connector.
Common Workflows
A common workflow in Rekhic is to draw a solid connector from a Web Server node to a Database node, and a dashed connector from the Web Server node to a Message Queue node, visually distinguishing synchronous database reads from asynchronous event publishing.
Related: Learn about Shapes & Text.