Connection Points: disable individually

Started by wapperdude, March 03, 2023, 05:23:26 PM

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wapperdude

So, you have a shape that may have a variable  number of connection points (SmartShape) or an existing shape which may need fewer active connection points.  What to do???  There's no known way to hide them.  There's no shapesheet mechanism to remove/add them.  The following seems to be a reliable method to disable them and prevent gluing under all but one condition...set the C-cell (not to be confused with sea shell) to a value greater than 2.  In my example, I chose "9". 

The caveat is that if the Connection Point row type is set to Named_Row, this doesn't work.  Reasonable.  If you go to the trouble of setting the row type, why would you disable it?  That's rhetorical, don't answer.

Note, once one row type is set to Named_Row, ALL rows show their names.  And, yes, Virginia, you may reset the row type back to regular, unnamed.  But, each row may still be named!  Cool.  Only the D-Cell will be dysfunctional.
Visio 2019 Pro

vojo

there used to be a way back in visio 2003  (essentially group the shape and set one of the cells in child subshape)   but this has been removed for some time.

If you are willing to do tedious, you could used shape data as a trigger set the connection point at location or move it back to some sort of "origin".   (if moved back to origin, could end up 127 connection points on top of each other).

Long time ago, like 20 years ago, I used this approach for placing wide or narrow based under a blade shape so that you could connect to it.


vojo


wapperdude

Attached is a simple (dumb???) smart use case applied to a logic gate.  Dbl click the shape to bring up shape data selection for logic symbol type and number of input leads.  There are connection points on each input lead and output.  If input lead is hidden, then the connection point is disabled and parked at edge of shape.  I only moved in X-dir because I'm lazy.  As Vojo mentioned, these could have been all moved to shape's origin point.  Note, because the pts are disabled, there is no real issue of stacking them, as would be the case if they were active.

This shape is intended to demostrate technique, not to be a perfect design.
Visio 2019 Pro