A scientific diagram maker inside your document

The diagram block is the scientific diagram maker in AI for Research. It sits in the editor, so a conceptual framework, a research flowchart or a study design diagram lives in the same document as the chapter that explains it. You can draw the diagram yourself in Mermaid, a short text format, for free, or describe it in a sentence and press Draw with AI for 1 credit. Either way you can edit it, and export it as SVG or PNG for a thesis, a journal figure or a poster.

What it does

Diagrams are Mermaid flowcharts, rendered by the editor. That makes them text you can change: rename a box, add an arrow or flip the direction from left-to-right to top-to-bottom, and the layout updates.

The diagram block can also be used from the framework module in the Thesis Suite, so a framework drafted there can be drawn without leaving the chapter. The Thesis Suite's Methodology Builder plans the study the flowchart describes.

What a diagram looks like as text

This is a small conceptual framework written in Mermaid. Each line is one relationship; text in square brackets is the label in the box, and text between the bars is the label on the arrow.

flowchart LR
  A[Workload] -->|H1 +| C[Burnout]
  B[Supervisor support] -->|H2 -| C
  C -->|H3 +| E[Intention to leave]
  F[Years in post] -.->|control| E

Example (invented for illustration). The dotted arrow marks a control variable, so it reads differently from the hypotheses. Change "LR" to "TB" and the same diagram runs top to bottom. Rename "Workload" to "Job demands" in one place and every arrow follows. This is why text diagrams are easier to keep in step with a changing thesis than a drawing in a slide program, where each box and arrow has to be moved by hand.

Choosing the right diagram

• Testing relationships between variables? Draw a conceptual framework: concepts as boxes, hypotheses as labeled arrows. Keep moderators visually distinct from mediators.
• Explaining what you will do, in order? Draw a methodology flowchart: one box per stage, left to right or top to bottom, with the data or output of each stage.
• Comparing groups over time? Draw a study design diagram: groups as rows, measurement points as columns, the intervention between them.
• Showing a theory you borrow rather than test? That is a theoretical framework, and it is often clearer as a short paragraph with a citation than as a diagram. See theoretical vs conceptual framework.

How it works, step by step

1. Open a document in the editor and insert a Diagram block.
2. To draw it yourself, type Mermaid in the block. For example, a first line flowchart LR and a second line A[Sleep quality] --> B[Exam performance] draw two boxes joined by an arrow, left to right.
3. To have it drawn, press Draw with AI and describe it: the concepts, how they relate, and the direction you want. The block fills with the Mermaid text and the rendered diagram (1 credit).
4. Edit the text to fix labels, add a moderator or reorder the stages.
5. Export the diagram as SVG or PNG, or leave it in the document and export the whole document to Word or PDF.

A worked example

Example (invented for illustration): a master's student in education is writing a proposal on whether peer feedback improves writing quality, and whether self-efficacy explains the effect.

1. In her proposal document she inserts a diagram block and presses Draw with AI: "Peer feedback affects writing quality. Self-efficacy mediates the effect. Prior writing grade is a control." Cost: 1 credit.
2. The diagram shows peer feedback pointing to self-efficacy and to writing quality, self-efficacy pointing to writing quality, and prior grade as a separate box with an arrow to writing quality.
3. Her supervisor asks for the hypotheses on the arrows. She edits the Mermaid text by hand to add H1, H2 and H3 as arrow labels: free.
4. She inserts a second block for the methodology flowchart and writes it herself in six lines of Mermaid: free.
5. She exports both as PNG for the Word version and as SVG for the poster she makes later.

Total: 1 credit.

What it does not do

• It does not decide your framework. Draw with AI draws what you describe; the theory, the variables and the hypotheses are your decisions, and your supervisor's.
• It does not draw data charts. For bar charts, scatter plots, survival curves and the like, use Data Lab, which calculates the statistics in the browser and exports the chart.
• It does not build the PRISMA flow diagram. That is in the Systematic Review workspace, free, filled from your real screening counts.
• It is not a drawing program. Mermaid lays out boxes and arrows automatically; for freehand illustrations, molecular structures or anatomical drawings, use a dedicated tool.
• Very large diagrams get hard to read. Split a framework with more than about a dozen concepts into two figures.

Who uses it

• Master's and PhD students drawing the conceptual framework for a proposal or thesis: see AI for a master's thesis and AI tools for PhD students.
• Undergraduates who need a methods flowchart for a dissertation or lab report: see AI for college students.
• Academics and industry researchers drawing study designs and system flows for papers: see AI for academics and AI for industry.

A diagram exported from here fits straight into a poster from the research poster maker. For the full set of editor features, see the AI writing editor.

Learn more

• How to draw a conceptual framework diagram
• Theoretical vs conceptual framework
• How to make a PRISMA flow diagram
• How to write a methodology chapter

Last updated 2026-11-13