I am a shapesheet newbie but it doesn't seem too hard.
I am trying to add lines to a standard shape. Lines between the parrallel or perpendicular edges are fine, but I cannot figure out how to calc the x,y coordinates of points on the shape's edge drawn by (I think) "ellipse to" (I don't have visio on this machine, cannot check).
Can someone please post an example or two?
Thanks in advance.
Dick Penny
Here is my shape that calculates tangential points on ellipse.
June does great work!!!
For what its worth...this is what I do
I could not figure out mathmatically how to find edge on ellipse
(either I misread all the google searches...or...I mistranslating them to visio ;-) )
So I kind of backed into it
- Let visio define ellipses based on width and height
- set connection points on the edge and made them controllable from shape props (aka define angle off of NSEW)
- set actual ellipse shape by shape props into width and height
This shape actually does more than you want....but probably provides insight
Double click to set things
width, height, depth = parameters of the "tube"
ang = angle off NSEW for the conntection points
off ang = angle of the barrel
Awesome input, as usual, guys!
Related notes:
- Be sure to check out the Drawing Tools stencil that comes with Visio. You'll find it under More Shapes > Visio Extras > Drawing Tools Shapes. I think most of these only deal with circles, but nonetheless, very much related to this post. The shapes work similar to June's shape.
- For drawing tangents, check out this article + video: Draw Tangent Lines in Visio! (http://www.visguy.com/2009/07/02/draw-tangent-lines-in-visio/)
Very nice find! :)
I must say that even though I read the whole article twice and watched the video 3 times, it took me quite a while to actually get the red line to "activate".
I couldn't get it at all, and I set the snap to extensions to 12 pixels, and turned on the "curve interior tangent" in the advanced tab. Then I finally got a dashed line that gave me a popup information box saying "snap to tangent". That was hopeful, but it still took a lot of wiggling to get the red line feature to activate.
Are there any tips and tricks to getting this to work faster and more smoothly?
A delay setting in the registry?
I'm using VISIO 2007 on WinXPSP3.
Also, is there a way to get the length of the arc between the two tangents on the pulley? That would allow calculation of the size of the belt or chain required to go all the way around. I've done this by hand, and it takes a bit of work:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.misc/thread/%3Cweb.53c69f83e73deed5e7df57c0%40news.povray.org%3E/
http://news.povray.org/povray.animations/thread/%3C53c6a8a7%241%40news.povray.org%3E/
Sorry for coming very very late to the party, and thanks for sharing this great trick!