Drawing just two lines produces a dotted rectangle around them, arrgh!

[DomB]

Hi,

When I draw two connected lines on the Visio page it automatically draws a dotted rectangle around them (whose corners are defined by the most extreme points of the two lines). This means I can no longer edit the properties, e.g. length and angle, of one of the lines after I've drawn it..

Can you tell me where I turn off that auto-rectangle (is it the alignment box?)?

Very many thanks!

[Jumpy]

You have to draw two unconnected lines and connect them after drawin, because the if you draw one line, it is a 1D Shape, when you draw the next line starting from an end point of the first line, the drawing tool automatically merges it together with the first line and makes from those two 1d shapes a single 2D shape. And that gets the alignment box.

[DomB]

Thanks very much - is there a way I can stop it happening - sure Visio never used to do that when I joined two lines

[vojo]

Since you are mention length and angle, I assume you are in the shapesheet.

Once connected and made into a 2D....the line segments are in the geometry section....its not obvious or even intuitive how to get that info, but after becoming much more familiar with visio
You will be able to figure out how to pull info.

Note, the drawing tool is pretty intelligent.   If you draw the two lines such that their end points touch, the tool will treat as separate lines
It only connects them if its     start...line 1....end...start....line 2....end