Custom line pattern

[Anders]

We created a custom line pattern. The pattern is a solid line parallell with
a dashed line:

_____________
-- -- -- -- --

Everything looks great until the length of the line is longer than approx
4000 mm then the line is getting cut into smaller segments:

__ __ __ __ __
- - - - - - - - - -

Why does the custom line pattern behave like this?

 

[John Goldsmith \(Visio MVP\)]

Hello Anders,

At a guess your custom line pattern master is something like 2666 mm and so
it gets duplicated when as it crosses the 50% threshold and you end up with
multiple instances.

Have a look at this blog post and let me know if it sheds some light on the
problem:

http://visualsignals.typepad.co.uk/vislog/2008/03/creating-random.html

Best regards

John


John Goldsmith (Visio MVP)
www.visualSignals.typepad.co.uk
www.visualSignals.co.uk

 

[Anders]

Ths custom line pattern is 4 mm wide. So when we have approx 1750 instances a
gap between the master shapes are introduced. As the line gets longer and
longer (up to 12000 mm) the gaps are wider and wider.

 

[John Goldsmith \(Visio MVP\)]

Hello Anders,

That's interesting. Would like share the file (or copy including the
pattern) with me?

My email is:

FirstNameDotLastNameAt
visualSignals.co.uk

Best regards

John


John Goldsmith (Visio MVP)
www.visualSignals.typepad.co.uk
www.visualSignals.co.uk

 

[Anders]

Try it by downloading the Christmas light demo from:

http://visio.mvps.org/FTP/ChristmasLights.zip

Set length of one of the christmas lights to 1000 in.

/A

 

[Anders]

Try it by downloading the Christmas light demo from:

http://visio.mvps.org/FTP/ChristmasLights.zip

Set length of one of the christmas lights to 1000 in.

 

[John Goldsmith \(Visio MVP\)]

Hello again Anders,

Well it looks like you've discovered the limit of Visio's pattern
duplication and that appears, from observation, to be 1000 instances. After
this Visio seems to be spacing them out along the length of the line.

You can see this happening if you edit the Christmas Line pattern master
(it's a 2D shape) to be 1 inch wide by 0.1 inches high. This gives you a
1:10 ratio make it easier to calculate the number of instances.

Using this editted pattern you can see that a line of 1000 inches on the
drawing page creates a seemless pattern, but from then on the spacing starts
to occur. If you then strech the line up to 2000 inches you can see that
the pattern sequence is an instance of 1 inch followed by a gap of 1 inch,
and so keeping the total number of pattern instances to be no more than
1000.

In terms of your current problem, custom line patterns are really all about
the ratio and height of the pattern shape vis a vis the weight of the line
that you are applying the pattern to, so try raising the line weight and see
and that should help. If that doesn't help you may need to adjust the
pattern master shape so that it works with the scale that you using.

Hope that helps.

Best regards

John


John Goldsmith (Visio MVP)
www.visualSignals.typepad.co.uk
www.visualSignals.co.uk