Visio 2010: Prevent Co-Linear Connector Routes - layout

I have recently picked up Microsoft Office Visio 2010 in the interest of drawing out the execution flow of a software application I am planning. So far I have enjoyed the program, and it has helped me significantly to figure out exactly what interactions and events I will need for the program even before I begin coding it. However, there is one gripe I have with the software, as I add new elements to the diagram, Visio tends to try to combine routes as often as possible. This can make it difficult at times to see exactly where some of the routes are pointing. For example:
Example 1: Example 2:
In Example 1, You can see that there are three routes, each with a different label. Originally, these labels would overlap each other as well. I figured out this can be turned off in the "Page Layout" dialog, so it's a little better than it was, but the beginnings and ends of the route are still combined. Here it's not really an issue, but it could be as shown in Example 2.
What's pointing where in Example 2? The line coming in from the left is pointing at the diamond on the bottom, and then there are three routes coming out the top of the diamond. This is the problem I'm trying to solve. It's not shown in these examples, but putting labels on those three routes in Example 2 puts the labels all on that long stretch of vertical, which makes it impossible to tell which label corresponds to which line.
Is there a way to prevent the lines from overlapping like this? I have fully explored the "Page Setup" dialog, but none of the options available there seem to allow this behavior. The only solution I was able to find online was to draw all the routes manually, but this would mean I cannot use the "Re-Layout Page" feature, and it could be rather time-intensive if Visio decides to do it often.
Update: While messing around with some more settings trying to find a solution to this, I came up with a great example showing just how bad this can get. Now, this is an extreme example, and if your diagrams look like this you're probably doing it wrong, but it clearly shows that it can quickly become impossible to tell what the source and destination for each line is.

After many more hours of searching for ways to make routes either not overlap or play nice, the only solution I've found that keeps being recommended is to re-arrange the routes manually. Changing things like snap settings and page layout options do help to some degree, but not completely. Hopefully the next incarnation of Visio will handle this better. Oh well, it's still a great tool and has definitely helped me visualize execution flow.

This may not be the solution for you but in my network diagrams, I can perform the following.
In Visio 2010 click Design tab, now click Connectors, and select curved.
It separates the lines but again it might not look right for a flow chart.

I'm having the exact same issue and have not found a satisfactory solution.
I've tried all the permutations of snap/glue settings, layout behaviour and connector behaviour with no success.
The best solution I've found so far is to manually add multiple connector points to your source and destination and use those to connect your shapes. Make sure 'no overlap' is specified for your connectors. You can then use the automatic align/layout tools and get something reasonably unambiguous.
You do lose the benefits of dynamic glue but you can mitigate that by deleting connection points (ie from one side of a shape) to force Visio to use your custom connections. You'll also have to disable 'glue to geometry' in the snap/glue options.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/visio-help/add-move-or-delete-connection-points-HP001231166.aspx
Please update this question if you find a better solution.

Huh. Most of the time, I have trouble getting my lines to overlap nicely :).
You might try changing some of the Snap & Glue settings:
On the View tab, in the Visual Aids group, click the dialog box launcher (the little two-headed arrow). In the Snap & Glue dialog box, I'd try changing the Snap to setting for Shape geometry.

I cna't tell if you're talking about doing this from code or not, but I've found the Design -> Layout -> Re-Layout option takes care of this.

Similarly to Alex I've found adding my own glue points to shapes and removing the default ones helps enormously. So does making sure one has appropriate settings under Page Setup | Layout and Routing:
Style: Right Angle
Separate: All lines
Overlap: No Lines
Appearance: Straight
Spacing: I found all these distances especially important
Being aware of the setting for each connector under Developer | Behaviour | Connector | Reroute, how that setting changes from "Freely" to "On Crossover" when a connector is rerouted manually is also important. Sometimes I find it necessary to set a particular connector to "Never". Also useful is the ability to select all the connectors (and NOT the shapes) with Select by Type when forcing Visio to reroute.
I'm doing this with Visio 2013's ERD diagrams and I've noticed that whilst I have defined my own connection points now on each entity it is usually best not to actually select them but let Visio dynamically select the "best" one - then if I re-arrange the entities the re-routing still works. One curiosity I've noticed is that Visio's connectors do not align with my connection points at the bottom of each entity but (since I deleted the OotB connection point at the bottom of the entity at any rate) is spacing the connectors appropriately. Along the top and down the sides the connectors are dynamically attached in the same places as my connection points.
I still sometimes have problems with connectors being placed under/inside/through entities (so a connector running through/inside/under a shape) [with ERD's especially with self-referential relationships] despite Developer | Behavior settings on both the connector and the shape seemingly to prevent that. Those are often the ones I have to route manually and set to re-route "Never".

[Visio 2016]
Not a complete solution, just an aid to manual re-routing, ...
Add "Connection Point" to the two shapes. Each connection line will then have its own route, ... though some overlapping might still occur.
Being graphically challenged, here is how I accomplish it, ...
Select the one of shapes (I have to also zoom in to get better placement control).
Select the X in the [Home] menu bar.
The selected shape will have small bumps for any shape connection points.
Press and hold the Ctrl key and hover on the boarder of the shape, the mouse cursor will change to show where a point would be added.
Ctrl-Click to add a connection point. Here I added 10 or so points.
Add additional connection points to the other shape and move the connectors to use unique points on the two shapes. Your connectors will be (more or less) separated.

Related

Filled area is not transparent when exporting my drawing to PDF in Revit

I am not sure if Revit is part of the Stackoverflow community but it seems that the Tag already existed so I decided to give it a try.
I have created a section of my 3D model. In order to export it as a PDF, I have created a new sheet and I have dragged a 2D of a section onto the sheet.
On top of the 2D section I needed to add some elements as filled areas with different hatches. When I check the areas on Revit, they are shown with a non transparent background (the section's lines of a 2D drawing are not visible behind), nevertheless when exporting it to a PDF the areas are transparent and I can see the section lines through them.
When checking the settings configurations for transparency filled areas the value is set to 0. Therefore, I would have expected not to have any difference between the Revit view and the PDF version (meaning non transparent background)
Am I missing something?
The StackOverflow tag is actually revit-api, standing for the Revit API, the built-in .NET programming interface. The API wraps the UI for automation purposes. Do you know how to achieve what you need manually through the end user interface? If so, that knowledge will be very helpful to determine how to achieve the same programmatically. If not, it can probably not be achieved programmatically either. The best place to raise a question to determine how to achieve the desired result manually in the user interface is the generic Revit Architecture discussion forum.

Adding a text box in Android Studo

Trying to use AndroidStudio (3.4.2) for the first time and it appers to be substantially different to the tutorial at
https://developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp/building-ui
For example:
There is no layout editor toolbar let alone a show button.
There is no autoconnect button
It doesn't show any wiggly lines from the middle of the blue square to its edges.
When adding a text box it goes to the top left and can't be moved.
WTF is going on? This is awful!
So I know this may sound like the hard answer, but in the long run it will make life 1000x easier.
You need to learn XML to design the activities. It's fairly simple and really easy to research. The reason the textbox can't be moved is because the default layout is ConstraintLayout. In order to fix this, go to the xml file and change the Constraint layout to either Relative layout or Linear Layout. In the end, its more simple to learn straight xml.
I suggest you learn Android programming from here or somewhere else because the Android documentation can be confusing especially for a beginner like yourself and trust me, I've been there.

Attaching items to the hands

We want to attach some UI and other items to the back of the articulated hand. Just trying to figure out how to do that. I have found how to turn on and off the hand visualizer through MixedRealityHandTrackingProfile but I'm trying to find the Unity Game Object I can parent the items to or at least a way to access the hand transform. Thanks for any pointers!
Step 1: Select the object in the scene hierarchy that you want to follow your hand. Click “add component” in the inspector panel.
Step 2: Type in “RadialView” in the search box and you should see the RadialView solver appear. Click on it. You will see a few additional required scripts appear automatically.
Note: it adds the solver handler script. Along with that, the Radial View script will show up as well just like the orbital script.
Step 3: Change the radial view to not follow the head but follow the left hand. Select the dropdown menu next to the “tracked object to reference” option. Then select “hand joint left” from the menu.
Step 4: As you may see, once you select the hand joint you can choose which part of the hand you want the cube to follow. There are a lot of options to use! For this example, we are going to use the wrist. So next to the option “tracked hand joint” click the dropdown menu and select wrist.
Note: Not all joints, in this current version of the HoloLens2 can be tracked. This is a bug that may be fixed in the near future.
Now if you press play and try it out in your scene, you will see that the object does follow the wrist, but the object may lag a little bit behind and looks like it’s struggling to keep up. Now to fix this and make it so that the object is with the wrist at all time we must change a few things. Set the maximum and minimum distances to 0 so that the cube will not have any distance between it and the user’s wrist. Once set, the cube will be perfectly aligned with the wrist.
In the latest mrtk_development branch as of PR 4532 you can also used the "Hand Constraint" component. You can see an example of how to use it at MixedRealityToolkit.Examples/Experimental/HandTracking/Scenes/HandBasedMenuExample.unity.
Have a look at Assets/MixedRealityToolkit.SDK/Experimental/Features/Utilities/Solvers/HandConstraint.cs for the implementation.
You can add this behavior by adding a "Hand Constraint" solver to the object that you wish to follow the hand.
The Hand Constraint component will also be available in the upcoming MRTK V2.0.0 RC2 release.

UMLDesigner – Diagram auto layout

I tried to use UMLDesigner to draw my project related diagrams. I see there is a Arrange functionality that can automatically layout diagram elements and links to save some manual work. But when i used it in my Activity diagrams it designed it upside down.
Here is an example. I created following simple activity diagram.
And here is how auto layout result for the same model looks like: auto layout.
The initial node is at the bottom and the final nodes are on top. But i want it the other way - to start at the top and end at the bottom. Is there a way to configure this?
I tried pinning starting and final nodes but it just made a mess after arranging the rest automatically. I searched the settings but couldn't find anything. I use UML Designer Version 7.1.0.
Thanks ahead for any help.
I am sorry there is no way from the preferences to change this behaviour.
This is because I never provide a specific layout for this diagram. Please, fill an issue in the bug tracker and it will be fixed for the next version of UML Designer as it is really easy to fix: https://github.com/ObeoNetwork/UML-Designer/issues.
Thanks for your feedback!

Building Nav Bars with rollovers in DreamWeaver CS3

I'm working with Dreamweaver CS3. The question here is what part of the code (listed below) do I need to replicate to have my secondary nav bar utilize the on-click action?
FYI...DW has two menu options or auto insert items...one for roll over images and one for "navbar". DW will only allow you to use the 'navbar' item once per page
the nav bar option builds all the rollover actions for you (listed below)
the "rollover" option ONLY builds normal and over, but no click
I guess I really have two questions...the first is what part of the code do I need to insert manually, the second is what does the "MM_nbGroup" code mean?
"../photogallery.html" target="_top" onClick="MM_nbGroup('down','group1','photoMainNav','../images/buttons/photography_down.gif',1)"
onMouseOver="MM_nbGroup('over','photoMainNav','../images/buttons/photography_over.gif','../images/buttons/photography_over.gif',1)" onMouseOut="MM_nbGroup('out')"><img src="../images/buttons/photography.gif"
Thanks for any help on this in advance!
For anyone wondering the same thing, here's what I've found so far...
The 'insert' bar provided in DWCS3 doesn't allow for two 'inserted' menu bars on one page. However, the 'Behaviors' palette will allow you to add effective roll-overs with the "Set Nav Bar Image" option. Unfortunately (as far as I can tell) DWCS3 is not as smart as Adobe's GoLive was, in that it won't automatically fill in the appropriate items if you name your files correctly. Even still, you should name your images accordingly (xxx_over, xxx_down, etc) to keep it straight in your own head.
As for the MM_nbGroup question, best I can tell this is WYSIWYG code that ships with DWCS3 (the kind of stuff that really mifs some of you developers, sorry guys), as it names items by group # and doesn't seem to have any real relevance in the lexicon of html. I could be mistaken on this however, and am open to enlightenment on the topic if anyone can offer.

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