Multi-color, 3D line?

[cookiejar]

I am trying to draw some knots tied with a rope. Something like this:



To show how the rope is woven, I want to be able to put some sections of the rope behind others. Any ideas how to achieve this as much as possible? Thanks.

[vojo]

custom line fill.
Create the pattern you want...add it to the line fill options...then use it

[wapperdude]

You'll need to use Custom Line patterns to get that kind of line texture.  See Visio Guy's entry:  http://www.visguy.com/2008/03/03/release-the-power-of-visio-custom-line-patterns/.  It references John Goldsmith's articles which are quite informative.  Note, Visio Guy has quite of few Custom Line pattern offerings besides the one I referenced.  You might also search this forum.

I did an example similar to your particular design.  The pattern probably should be cut in half, but, it gives you an idea...

Wapperdude

[Yacine]

The pattern line was also my first idea, however it doesn't help showing the knot.

[Jumpy]

I have to do sth. similar all the time. I need spirals or coils, which loop arround things. Normaly pipes around tanks.
This is accomplished as can be seen in the drawing by
1. Drawing a complete spiral
2. Placing the tank above it
3. Place a copy of the spiral, where parts are missing abover the tank, so that it has the same x/y-coordinates as the complete spiral.
4. Thats it.

To 3.: The missing parts I get with changing some lines in the GeometrySection of the spiral from "ElipticArcTo" to "MoveTo" rows.

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The same principle should be usable to your problem, especially with different colored lines for ropes.
But it may be not usable in combination with custom line patterns, because Visio has a bug, that ignores the "MoveTo" rows with custom line patterns. There is a post about that somewhere here. MoveTo only works with patternless lines or the original Visio patterns.

[cookiejar]

Thanks a lot for the replies. Custom pattern seems to work OK until I tried the trick of changing "LineTo" to "MoveTo". The line is drawn even the row is a "MoveTo" Any ideas about this? Thanks.

[vojo]

curson on move to row
edit==>change row

[Jumpy]

See my coment above. It's a bug.

[Visio Guy]

@cookiejar,

Don't use multiple MoveTos, try adding separate Geometry sections (Insert > Section). Maybe that will work better.

[cookiejar]

Thank you all! It's working perfectly now.