dimensioning - extension line size, or an arrow with a perpendicular line

Started by wakalix, February 17, 2020, 04:48:09 PM

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wakalix

I often use horizontal or vertical dimensioning from More Shapes > Visio Extras > Dimensioning Engineering.  For such callouts, Visio allows the user to show or hide beginning or ending extension lines. However, the size of these lines are often too large for my taste, even when minimized using the GUI.  The size of the line scales with the font size of the text associated with the dimension.

Is it possible to decouple the length of the extension lines from the font size? (I could add a separate text box as a work-around.)

I have Developer mode on, and have poked around in the ShapeSheet, but haven't found anything.

Alternatively, how about an arrow head that has a perpendicular line on the end such that it looks like a dimension. Does this exist?

Thanks.

wapperdude

I assume you're talking about the amount of extension of the vertical line...in the case of the horizontal dimensioning shape.  It is possible to change that.  But, not on global level, so you'd have to save it to a custom stencil.

Open the shape sheet and scroll to the Scratch section.  The cell C3 ought to have formula char.size.  Change this to whatever you like.

You will need to save the shape.

Visio 2019 Pro

wakalix

Thank you, wapperdude.  I got it to work by changing the expression in Scratch cell B3, which uses the value in cell C3. Changing the value in cell C3 didn't appear to change anything, oddly.

Thanks!

wapperdude

Well, at least in my version, B3 has the formula:  =Scratch.C3*Scratch.B1.  So, B3 has to respond to C3.  By overwriting the B3 formula, you eliminate the B1 functionality.  That will impact the shape when it is copied to pages with different scale factors.
Visio 2019 Pro

wakalix

My version is the same - Visio 2016. I didn't overwrite the B3 formula. Rather, I just scaled it with a coefficient in front, e.g. 0.5. I don't know why manually inserting a value for C3 doesn't work, but that's OK.