# What Canvas is

> Revquix's diagram board - creating one, how saving works, what the two tabs are for, and the limits a board has.

Source: https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/what-canvas-is
Last verified: 2026-09-04

---

Canvas is a diagram board for architecture sketches, system designs and flowcharts. It does what
you would expect a whiteboard tool to do - and one thing most of them do not: **you can animate the
flow along your connectors and export that as a video or an animated SVG.**

Your boards live at [/dashboard/canvas](https://www.revquix.com/dashboard/canvas).

## Making one

**New canvas** opens a blank board. You can also start from a file - Canvas opens its own
`.revquix` files and imports from Excalidraw and draw\.io, covered in [importing a diagram](https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/importing-a-diagram).

Boards are private until you decide otherwise. See [sharing a board](https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/sharing-a-board).

## Saving

**There is no save button.** Changes are written automatically, shortly after you stop drawing, and
the status bar tells you where the board stands - unsaved, saving, or saved.

> **Warning** - If it says the board changed elsewhere, do not keep drawing
>
> That means the same board was edited somewhere else - another tab, another device - and saving over
> it would discard that work. Autosave stops rather than overwriting. Reload the board to pick up the
> other version.

## The two tabs

A board has a companion page rather than a settings pane.

| Tab         | What is there                                                                                                  |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Board**   | The drawing itself.                                                                                            |
| **Details** | The name, who can read it, how big it has grown against the limits, when it was last touched, and deleting it. |

## Limits

A board is capped on **how many elements it holds** and **how large the saved document is**. The
Details tab shows where you are against both, so you find out before a save is refused rather than
after.

Files you import are capped too - see [importing a diagram](https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/importing-a-diagram).

> **Note** - A board is not a place to store big images
>
> Pasted images are embedded in the document and count against its size. A board that has become
> mostly screenshots is close to its ceiling for reasons that have nothing to do with the diagram.

## Where to go next

- [Drawing a diagram](https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/drawing-a-diagram) - The tools, the shortcuts and the styling panel.

- [Animating a flow](https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/animating-a-flow) - The part other diagram tools do not have.

- [Paged mode and PDF](https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/paged-mode-and-pdf) - Turning a board into a printable document.

- [Exporting a board](https://www.revquix.com/docs/canvas/boards-and-export) - Every format a board can leave as.