The Axis Tool allows the user to make changes quickly to many items on the axes without refreshing the matrix after each change. It is especially useful for creating new graphs from scratch or working with large matrices.

To open the Axis Tool select Axis | Axis Tool.... This operation opens a window as illustrated in Figure 4–40.

The Axis Tool consists of two lists: the list on the left shows which of the two axes you are working on and that on the right the items on the selected axis. Through the pop-up menu of the items list you can add, delete and move items. Delete from Matrix deletes all occurrences of the selected object from the matrix (useful if the same object is on both axes).

Because of the matrix representation, some matrix specific functionality is naturally incorporated in the Matrix Editor. One typical example is diagonalization, and another is sorting.

The diagonalization of a matrix is performed simply. To do this, just select Analysis | Diagonalise. As a result the elements of the currently selected axis are re-organized so that relationships between elements are located close to the diagonal.

Analysis | Sort... allows you to sort the elements on the horizontal and vertical axis. The sorting can be ascending or descending based on alphabetical order of object names, with or without their types.