custom line ends don't work as advertised

Started by perry59, June 24, 2022, 06:06:46 PM

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perry59

I came back to this problem after giving up a few months ago and am ready to give up again.
On my first effort I followed the instructions in John Goldsmith's blog here https://blogs.msmvps.com/visio/2005/06/05/custom-line-ends/  it sorta worked, but the line ends ended up being opposite of what was described. Instead of looking like this (----), they look like this )---(
Also implied in these instructions and others, is that you only need to create one line end, if you apply it to both ends of a line then one would come in as a mirror image (mirrored on the vertical plane). On my first attempt with my own line ends I created just one line end and it came out close to what I wanted. One end was mirrored, but was also mirrored on the horizontal plane too which I did not want. The line ends I wanted looked similar to what John had, only with "tails", see line ends1.vsd.
Since one of the line ends was not oriented right I made another try by creating line ends for both ends of the line, one being the mirror image of the other. This came out worse than the first effort. The line end was still mirrored vertically and horizontally compared to the image in the line end definition, see line ends2.vsd.
And, by the way, it is always the beginning line end that messes up, the end line end always comes out fine. Another thing I discovered while working on this, contrary to what previous instructions say, having guides in the pattern would offset the line end shape from the line and prevented selecting line by anything other than the "ends". DO NOT USE GUIDES in the line end definitions!
So it seems that visio has some type of bias against the beginning line end shape, even if I edit the definition and rotate it in some arbitrary way, it still comes in the same, WRONG!
what, me worry?

Surrogate

#1
Quote from: perry59 on June 24, 2022, 06:06:46 PMin John Goldsmith's blog
it is John Marshall's old blog...
My custom line ends works correct only with lines, not connectors

John is registred there.

perry59

Quote from: Surrogate on June 24, 2022, 07:32:20 PM
Quote from: perry59 on June 24, 2022, 06:06:46 PMin John Goldsmith's blog
it is John Marshall's old blog...
My custom line ends works correct only with lines, not connectors

sorry, my bad
what, me worry?

Yacine

#3
Perry, You were not persistant enough.  ;D
Having noticed that the end is fine, I duplicated it and used it as new begin.
Flipping horizontally did not help, so I moved the locpin from top left to bottom left.
Done.

Lesson learned: the line begin can very well (actually must) point to the same direction as the line end. You just need to make the rotation in your head.

Out of curiosity, what do you need it for?


PS: Thought about the mirroring and about rotating the stuff in your head. It's in fact a radial symmetry, rather than a line/plane -wise
Yacine

perry59

Awesome! Thanks Yacine!
I didn't think of that, but should have.
What this line type represents is a "stowed" wire. In the aviation industry is fairly common. When avionics are removed or otherwise changed, sometimes there are wires that are no longer needed. Rather than going through the sometimes huge amount of labor to remove them they are "capped and stowed" on either or both ends. Snipping off the ends near a connector and covering with heatshrink.
Perry
what, me worry?