Typically when ballooning, a newly created balloon will populate just to the left of your annotation box. While this usually works out fine, you may find yourself in situations where your balloons are not perfectly aligned or are illogically placed.

To organize your balloons, simply click the Select Multiple Annotations function (the dotted square) in the toolbar, and click + drag over all your balloons. This will simultaneously select every balloon within the area you choose.

Once you select which balloons you would like to organize, you will notice a new set of options pop up on the left side of your screen. These are all different ways of organizing your balloons:

This will align all selected balloons with your leftmost selected balloon.

This will align all selected balloons about a vertical axis at the center of your selected balloons.

This will align all selected balloons with your rightmost selected balloon.

This will align all selected balloons with your topmost selected balloon.

This will align all selected balloons about a horizontal axis at the center of your selected balloons.

This will align all selected balloons with your bottommost selected balloon.

This will evenly distribute all selected balloons horizontally.

This will evenly distribute all selected balloons vertically.

Balloon Color / Size settings are configured on a per customer basis. This means that each time you create an FAI report for a specific customer, these settings will be used by default. This is especially useful for customers with specific preferences.

To access these settings, click the Balloon Color / Size function in the toolbar. When the button is blue, it is inactive. When it is green, it is active and you will see the Color / Size settings above your drawing.

With this function active, you will be able to manually adjust the Balloon Fill Color, Balloon Outline Color, Balloon Stroke Weight, Balloon Size, Text Color, Enable Leader Lines, Leader Line Color, and Leader Line Weight.

Once you have finished customizing your Balloon and Leader Line settings, click the Update button to save your selections and your new settings will be applied.

What do you do when you missed a characteristic while ballooning? With GroundControl, you no longer have to start from scratch — you can insert a balloon after the fact.

Instead of deleting balloons, you should try the Insert in Place mode, which will insert a balloon at the characteristic number of your choice, and automatically reorder all other balloons to compensate. You can find this in the toolbar. Click the blue Insert in Place button. When it has turned green, you are in Insert in Place mode.

Then click on the balloon that you would like to insert a balloon in the place of. You will see in the image above that the Insert in Place Mode now reads Inserting in Place: N.

Once you have selected the correct balloon, turn Annotation Mode on, and balloon the characteristic that you missed previously. After giving it a second to process, your new balloon will be in place, and you will find that all balloons after have been automatically renumbered.

Depending on the complexity of your Form 3 drawing, you may find that you need to include sub-balloons. GroundControl can do exactly that for you.

By toggling on the Sub-Balloon function in the toolbar, you can select an existing balloon and begin sub-ballooning. The toolbar will show you which balloon you are sub-ballooning under if you have selected one already. Click the blue Sub-Balloon button. When it has turned green, you are in Sub Balloon mode.

From there, simply turn on Annotation Mode and create your sub-balloons, and they will automatically be numbered N.1, N.2, N.3 ... and so on.

Additionally, you can create sub-sub-balloons by selecting a sub-balloon before annotating.

GroundControl will denote sub-balloons numerically by default. However, some customers may prefer that you denote them alphabetically. If this is the case for your specific FAIR, simply navigate to the characteristic in your spreadsheet panel toward the bottom of your screen, and manually edit the Char # like you would in an Excel file.

If you manually change the any value in your characteristic card, you will see a pop-up notification on the bottom right of the screen that confirms your edit has been saved. However, for values other than the requirement and result, it will also ask you if you would like to update all characteristics. If you click Update All, all characteristics will be updated with the value that you just changed.

When ballooning, you may find that, depending on the complexity of the characteristic you are ballooning, there will be a slight delay while GroundControl processes the information.

During this processing time, you are not able to edit the characteristic that you are processing. But, that does not mean that your time cannot be used valuably.

While GroundControl is processing information, you can continue ballooning as many characteristics as you would like. Each additional characteristic will be processed in the background while you continue moving — wasting no time at all.

Your balloons will continue populating in the order you created them in while you have moved on to the next task. How useful!

Another useful tool for your ballooning needs is the Whiteout Annotations function in the top toolbar. Click the blue Whiteout Annotations button. When it has turned green, you are in Whiteout Annotations mode. This is one that you will find especially useful for drawings that are extremely information dense.

When toggling on the Whiteout Annotations function, any annotation boxes you have made for your balloons will be whited out. So, for those tightly-packed drawings, this tool will prevent ballooning information multiple times and prevent missing characteristics in general.

Before:

After:

When reviewing your characteristics, the Snap to Balloon function is an invaluable tool. Click the blue Snap to Balloon button. When it has turned green, you are in Snap to Balloon mode.

While the Snap to Balloon function is on, you can use the Up or Down arrow keys in order to navigate between each row of characteristics in your Form 3. Alternatively, you can click on the row for any given characteristic to snap to that one. This serves to make double checking your balloons before exporting Form 3 much simpler and quicker than ever before.

The drawing window will zoom in to the corresponding annotation box for each characteristic, making it incredibly easy to compare the raw drawing to the parsed data — ensuring no mistakes slip through the cracks.

When annotation mode is on, you'll notice a grey bar pop up above your drawing. This contains the Balloon Position button. With this button, you can adjust where a balloon will populate after annotating a characteristic.