Drawing Scale Symbol: a smartshape

[wapperdude]

After getting really annoyed with the drawing scale symbol that comes with Visio, I decided to make a smarter symbol.  Hopefully it's an improvement.  The shape has two control points which allow the user to independently size the small and medium distance identifiers (or whatever they're called).  As you stretch the overall shape, the text resizes, so, if you need a really tiny symbol, you get really tiny font to go with it!   

Enjoy!
Wapperdude

[Visio Guy]

What's wrong with the one that comes with Visio? (I made it, many, many years ago)

[wapperdude]

Ouch!!!

The annoyance is that the 1st minor sub-division, which is a fixed 3/5 of the next sub-division.  At 3/5ths, there are only certain lengths, i.e., multiples of 10's that give "nice" numbers.  It was a complaint on MS forum.  By adding control points to the two minor subdivisions, the shape becomes smarter, and more flexible.

[wapperdude]

I felt obligated to re-do the Scale symbol shape in an attempt to raise its quality.  After all, Visio Guy does set a high standard!!!  So, the attached uses a more efficient construction technique, presents the scale numbers in an improved format (I think?), does a better job of scaling the font size, and also scales the border line width.  I also changed the "units" to show the total length of the symbol with the units.

Another improvement is the global control of the font.  Now when the shape is selected, the font "face" can be set, e.g., Arial, Comic Sans, etc., but the size is frozen to preserve the width based scaling.

Enjoy!
Wapperdude

[Visio Guy]

Hey that's pretty interesting!

I think that when I originally made the shape, I was copying what I'd seen on existing drawings. And where I saw this type of shape, it was always a "base-10" type of situation - 1:1:1:3:5 (1,2,3,5,10) if you will.

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I suppose it would make sense to do a 12-ish version that goes something like: 1:1:1:3:6 (1,2,3,6,12)

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Maybe try to work thirds, quarters and halves into it - since that is the advantage of 12s (and 16s) is their wonderful divisabilities.

[mbennett555]

What's wrong with the one that comes with Visio? (I made it, many, many years ago)

Dear Visio Guy:

In the above post, you asked, What's wrong with the scale symbol object that comes with Visio?  (Found inside the Annotations stencil.)  I do understand that you're the author of that scale symbol object, so please don't take this too personally.  But since you asked, here are 2 things about the Visio 2010 scale symbol that I find frustrating.  (These were not mentioned in the earlier thread.)

Item 1.  If the user selects "Show Units", the units of feet are displayed as "ft." (note the period).  For example, the numbers above the scale might be:  "0 ft.    12 ft.    20 ft.    40 ft."  When I worked for Black & Veatch (the large engineering company headquartered in Overland Park, KS), our rule regarding abbreviations on drawings was this:  If the abbreviation spells out an English word, the period is not required at the end of the abbreviation; otherwise, the period is required.  So by that rule, we displayed the abbreviation for feet as "ft"; and the abbreviation for inch as "in." (note the period).  When I use the standard Visio 2010 scale symbol, I'm not able to remove the period after "ft" in the scale symbol.  But when I use the scale symbol written and posted by "wapperdude", I'm able to remove the period.

Item 2.  With the standard scale symbol, if the user selects "Hide Units", and even if the scale is set-up to display whole feet, the numbers above the scale change to display feet and inches; and there are no indicators after the feet or inch values to indicate the units (for example, the single quote abbreviation for feet, and the double quote abbreviation for inches).  Continuing with the above example, the numbers above the scale look like this:  "0 0    12 0    20 0    40 0".  To me, these numbers are too easy to interpret as 0, 120, 200, and 400 ft.

Thank you.