Ignore group member shape for glue boundary

Started by GaryParr, April 01, 2020, 07:36:39 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

GaryParr

Sorry if this is has been answered somewhere before, but I've been googling for a good while with no solid leads on an answer.

Suppose I have a group shape that is pretty much a square. The outer boundary of the group is the appropriate glue boundary, and disabling the "snap to member shapes" on the group works as it should. However, now suppose I add some additional member shapes to the group to act as status badges, conditionally shown depending upon relevant shape data. These badges hang over the normal outer boundary of the parent group. Visually nothing changes, and the Visio alignment guides ignore the badge shapes. Unfortunately, the outer glue boundary does not. The effect is that connectors seem to end before actually connecting.  I'm aware that I can add connection points to overcome this, but I'm trying to find a simple answer. Is there any way to tell Visio to ignore certain member shapes within a group when determining the outer boundary of said group for gluing connectors?

I've attached a quick snip of the issue. Connectors coming in from the left are hanging due to the extended shape boundary, connectors in from the right are what it should look like. I need to somehow tell Visio that the "trash can" (used here to indicate the component is being decommissioned) is not really the outer edge of the group.

Thanks,
Gary

vojo

Might want to look at adding connectors to the base shape and connect to them.
Or make the badge fit in the group (smaller or place completely within the group boundary).
Or bring some lines out from the base shape that extends beyond where badge sits....when connected it could look like you want (This last one is probably tedious to get right)

If you want to get slick, in the shape sheet, you can set the connection points to be an offset from a location.
Cells C and D.   Not sure it helps your problem, but does give another lever to try.

vojo

one other idea.  In the past, I have set the width/height of a shape to 0mm to effective hide the shape.  I don't know what happens at the group level (I usually manually connect shapes since autoconnect is hard to tame).

GaryParr

Thanks for the reply, but unfortunately users sometimes need to run multiple connectors out the same side of a shape without merging them into a single point. Rather than cram connection points onto the shape to cover all possible needs, I'm really hoping to let autoconnect do what it does best. Best I can seem to do is move those badges inside the group boundary when not visible, which covers the majority of use cases and probably something I should have done from the get-go. I'm still searching for a "ignore this stupid thing" combination of properties that will cause the group glue boundary to, well, ignore those stupid things since visible badges still create a connector stand-off in some situations.

vojo

if any of the 3 ideas work for 1 connector...then it works for 1,000,000 connectors