Lucidscale allows you to import architecture from AWS and generate diagrams from that data in a Lucidscale document.
Lucidscale is available to Lucid Suite Enterprise accounts as an add-on purchase with the Cloud Accelerator. To learn more about the Cloud Accelerator, refer to our Cloud Accelerator overview article.
Get started
Access imported AWS infrastructure
Once the AWS architecture data has been imported to the Lucid Data Hub, you can automatically render the architecture data in a document by creating a Lucidscale document.
After choosing an import method and completing the import, your account will be rendered in the "AWS: Imported Accounts” section of the Data Hub. You can also find it listed as an existing AWS account in the modal after clicking + New > Lucidscale > AWS.
From the Data Hub, clicking Create document will automatically render your AWS infrastructure as a diagram in a new document’s workspace.
Documents you have created previously are stored in the "Documents" section of your Lucid Home Page. Hover over a document with your cursor and click Open to access the rendered AWS infrastructure.
Tip: If you have Cloud Accelerator access, you can use the Cloud Agent (beta) to automatically generate and lay out diagrams from your imported AWS data using plain-language prompts. However, for rule-based, persistent views that you plan to re-sync over time, the standard Lucidscale view-based workflow remains the right choice.
Navigate the workspace
After you import AWS architecture and generate a Lucidscale document, Lucidscale will automatically render its components in the workspace of a document.
Learn more: AWS resources will render as an interactive, data-backed diagram in the workspace. If you want a free-form snapshot of the environment, export the resources in a document to Lucidchart shapes.
Create and save views
Your Lucidscale document contains a single cloud frame, and views are the different visualizations you create within it. Views allow you to display resources from various perspectives—each one applies a different configuration of structure, filter, and layout settings to the same imported data.
Create new views, manage existing views, and toggle between views using the tabs in the Views menu (shown above). When you generate a new document, the rendered infrastructure is automatically displayed in the Summarized Infrastructure view.
You can rename a view, duplicate a current view with auto layout or manual layout, export configuration as a JSON, and delete a view from the drop-down menu on the View tab.
You can create other views using any of our standard view templates by selecting the plus icon to the right of any existing View tabs.
Here is a list of our view templates:
- Summarized Infrastructure
- Infrastructure
- VPC Topology
- Resources
- Security Groups
- ECS
- Serverless
- Cost Saving Insights
- Security Insights
- Compliance Insights
ECS View enables you to view services and tasks running in a cluster. It also splits clusters into EC2 and Fargate containers.
Security Groups View enables you to view resources within their compartmentalized security groups. Resources that have multiple security groups will be duplicated across containers. The Security Group option in the Generated Lines section would also generate a line between security groups that both allow bi-directional traffic.
Cost Savings Insights View provides insights into specific resources and services that could enable you to optimize cloud spend and decrease cost.
Security Insights View enables you to gain general insights into services configuration that could pose security threats.
Compliance Insights View highlights potential compliance issues within your infrastructure.
Manual layout views can be created from scratch or by duplicating an existing view. This option allows you to access a freeform layout in which you have control over the shape placement and can make manual changes. For example, you can click and drag resources onto the canvas of your document or resize individual containers.
Note: Unlike in an auto layout view, resources that are manually added to your document data after syncing will not automatically be added to the canvas. You will need to place these resources manually by dragging and dropping onto the canvas or by clicking the "eye" icon for individual resources.
You can save collections of settings and filters as a view to quickly render infrastructure from various perspectives. Any changes made to settings and filters while in a particular view will be automatically saved to that view, allowing you to display different representations of the infrastructure in the workspace.
Show and hide resources
All AWS resource types supported by Lucidscale are listed in the Resources panel of an open document. The search bar can be used to access a specific resource type in this list. The resources are categorized first by whether they are mapped or unmapped followed by their functional use in the infrastructure.
Tip: Mapped resources are those that Lucid can automatically place onto the canvas in the document. Unmapped resources are ones Lucid discovers during the import process but doesn’t have the ability to place into the correct area in the document on the canvas. You can click and drag resources from the “unmapped” section onto the document.
Toggle on and off resources
Click on a mapped category (e.g. Management Group) to render every supported resource type in that category. The numbers shown on a resource type indicate resources currently rendered/total resources imported. Select a specific resource type to render a list of the individual resources of the selected resource type present in a document.
You can show/hide entire classes of mapped resources by toggling the “Eye” icon next to the resource type. This also applies to unmapped resources, as long as they’ve been manually placed on the canvas. For example, if you toggle VPCs off, Lucidscale will hide all VPCs from the document, but continue to display the resources that were inside of them. You can also show/hide resources on an individual basis by toggling the same “Eye” icon rendered on an individual resource.
Show lines between resources
Note: If you opt to summarize resources within a Lucidscale View, you will need to un-summarize them or create a new view containing un-summarized resources in order for associated lines to be rendered in the document.
You can render lines between resources in a document that represent the relationships between resources (resources that explicitly reference another in the metadata). You can toggle these lines on and off from the Lines panel in an open document.
All supported lines are categorized by the type of relationship they represent. Toggling the checkbox rendered on a category will show/hide all relationships within that category. Toggling the checkbox rendered on a specific relationship will show/hide any lines representing that relationship in the document.
To display customization options for a specific line type, hover over the line type and click the pencil icon. From there you can modify the line’s color, style, and type in the expanded menu.
Select a line rendered in the document to indicate the relationship represented by the line in the Data Panel to the right of the workspace.
View shape metadata
Click an individual resource in the Resources tab to navigate to where it's rendered in the document and display the metadata associated with that individual resource in the Data panel to the right of the workspace. Click directly on a resource in the document to display the associated metadata. Lucidscale pulled this metadata when you originally imported the cloud infrastructure into the Lucid Data Hub.
You can view nested metadata fields and their values by selecting fields that have a grey arrow next to their title. Metadata values can be rendered on resources as text and used to create filters and conditional formatting in a document.
For more on creating conditional formatting in a Lucidscale document, read the following resources:
Tip: While using Cloud Version Compare, click a highlighted resource to open the contextual panel with a side-by-side view that shows which metadata fields changed and what the previous values were.
Layout settings for resources
You can apply layout settings to specific resource types in a document as well as the container type resources (AWS Cloud, Accounts, Regions, VPCs, Subnets) they’re rendered in. Select an individual resource in the Resources tab, or select a rendered resource in the document, to access the option to apply layout settings to all resources of that type in a document. Click Layout Settings in the Data panel to display the Layout Settings panel in its place.
Note: The layout settings available to containers are different from layout settings available to other resources.
From the Layout Settings panel, you can make the following adjustments to a document's layout:
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Determine whether containers in the same row will expand to match the height of the tallest container or resize to fit around their contents.
- This setting will apply to the container entity selected, rather than the contained resources.
- Group resources within a container by type.
- Adjust the alignment of resources in a container.
- Adjust the number of columns that shapes within a container are arranged in.
- Adjust the horizontal and vertical spacing between shapes within a container.
- Sort contained items by alphabetical order (A to Z or Z to A).
Display metadata values
In this menu, you can customize what metadata values you want to display under a resource’s shape. To configure the metadata values displayed, either click on the resource type in the "Resources" tab or select a rendered resource in the document to access the "Layout Settings" panel for that resource. Then, under the “Text Fields” section, you can either type to search or manually search and select a metadata field.
A selected field will appear with a checkbox under the input field where you can check or uncheck the fields you want to display under the resource icon. You can also drag and move the fields to reorder how the metadata values are displayed on resource icons.
Some of the selected fields may have empty/null values in the metadata. To hide empty fields created when the text field is checked, select the menu next to the field and choose the Hide Empty Field.
Summarize resource shapes
You can summarize shapes for the same resource type into a single shape with a badge identifying the number of individual resources summarized.
There are two ways to summarize shapes. The first is from within the Layout Settings panel. Select a resource and toggle on "Summarize Shapes" in this panel to summarize the shapes of the selected resource type.
You can also right-click on the resources you want to summarize and select the “Summarize All” option. To un-summarize the shapes, follow these same steps.
Structure control
You can control the organizational hierarchy of the entities in a document through the Structure control menu. Click + Add Group to add containment levels (containers) to the schema. After adding a group, LUCID automatically renders and places the associated container(s) according to the schema. You can also remove them from the hierarchy by hovering over the group and clicking X.
You can add the following groups to a Lucidscale document's hierarchy:
- Accounts
- Regions
- VPCs
- Availability Zones
- Security Groups
- ECS Clusters
- Subnets
Filters
You can filter out resources rendered in a document based on metadata associated with the resource.
Note the following about filters:
-
You can save filters to one view or across all views. To save a filter across all views, enable “Advanced Rule Options” when creating or editing the filter and check the box labelled “Apply to all views”. Unchecking the box on an existing filter removes that filter from all other views.
- Enable Advanced Rule Options to use formulas in a filter and add multiple conditions to the filter. For more information on formulas, read our Lucid formulas article.
- Filters can be checked or unchecked to apply or unapply.
- If you filter out an individual container entity (Region, VPC, Subnet), this also filters out the contents of that container.
- Filters work as "OR" relationships. If you have two filters, eg. Filter1 and Filter2, the document will display anything that matches the criteria in Filter1 OR Filter2.
- When you apply a filter, you must select an entity type to apply it to. For non-container entities, the filter will only apply to the entity type that you selected. For example, if you apply the filter of “Name contains ‘test’” to the EC2 entity type, this will not apply to any VPCs, regardless of whether their names contain ‘test.’
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