Expandable Shapes like "People" or "Newspaper Pile"

[fredyst]

Hi,
I would appreciate if anybody helped me with the following problem:
For a library I am to create shapes that show the backs of up to 4 copies of the same book side by side. When I took a look at the shape sheet of the default shape "People" from "Marketing Shapes", I couldn't figure out the logic.
TIA for any explanation.

[Paul Herber]

The People shape is a grouped shape, 4 individual shapes that have been grouped together.
Put 4 copies of your book shape on the page and space them appropriately, select all four then menu Shape -> Grouping -> Group
Then you might have a look at menu Format -> Behavior  and look at the Group behavior section.

[wapperdude]

You might also want to check out array shapes:  Tools>Add-ons>Array Shapes.  Requires that your starting shape be selected.

[fredyst]

Thanks a lot for your answers/suggestions, but ....

Basically Paul's one seems to show the way to go. But whatever group setting I choose, the members of the group are being stretched when I am dragging the control point. I am looking for the exact behaviour of the people or the newspaper shape. While enlarging the shape I want the additional copies of the bookcovers to "come from underneath".

As I do not know whether I have made a basic mistake while setting up the multishape, I am asking you to be a little more precise. TIA.

[wapperdude]

Looking at the People shape, the basic behavior is as follows:
>>  As Paul pointed out, the shape is a group of four shapes.
>>  As the group is expanded, the group width is used to determine when one of the four shapes should appear
>>  The group width controls both the underlying sub-shape's width and position.
>>  Thru the scratch formulas and the shape data, then, as the width is expanded the underlying shapes pop up in the desired locations.

The group info is pushed down into each sub-shape.  If the group width is too narrow, the underlying shapes have their width reduced (not sure this is necessary), and their positions set, PinX (& PinY), to place them under the 1st shape.  (I guess the sub-shape width control is necessary to "hide" the shape if the group width is really narrow.)  As the group width is expanded, it is compared via "IF" statements and a series of scratch calculations to determine if at least 1/2 of the subshape would be visible.  If so, the PinX (& PinY if needed) are set to new values and the width is set appropriately.   Thus, the sub-shape is "allowed" to appear.

Note, it's possible to track how/where these formulas go if you turn on the Formula Tracing window.  With a shapesheet window active, go to menu bar > View > Formula Tracing.  See John Goldsmith's article on this:  http://visualsignals.typepad.co.uk/vislog/2008/11/3-shapesheet-tips-part-2---formula-tracing.html

Hope this helps.
Wapperdude

[TacticalTech]

I couldn't find a good tutorial on this subject, but had the same question a couple weeks ago. I pried apart the multi-urinal and multi-sink shapes and figured it out eventually, and jotted down some notes on how to build a multi, expandable or continuous (whatever you want to call it) shape. Little late, but I hope this helps:

http://www.tactical-tech.net/blogPage.php?id=58