How do I move the endpoints location on a 1D shape.

[swichman2210]

How do I move the endpoints location on a 1D shape.

Background
I am running Visio 2007

I am creating a stencil consisting of equipment rack, shelves and cards.
The rack is a 2D shape with connector points on each of the mounting
locations. The shelf is a 1D object with connector points at the top/bottom
points that correspond to the left edge of a card slot. The card will be a
1D object.

For reference purposes, visualize the shelf a a square. As a 1D object, the
shelf needs to have the endpoints along the bottom of shape. With the
mounting points on the bottom of the shelf, when I move a shelf from the
stencil, it will glue itself to the mounting position in the shelf. The
problem is that when you create a shape, the endpoints are in the middle, of
the vertical axis of the shape. This way when I drag the shape out of the
stencil it will be represented as a horizontal line that I can drop onto the
rack mounting point.

Correspondingly, the card shape needs to have the endpoints on the left hand
side of the shape with the start point at the top left hand position and the
end point at the bottom left hand position. This way when I drag the shape
out of the stencil it will be represented as a vertical line that I can drop
into a card slot.

I know this can be done. I have seen shapes with setup this way. A good
example is the shape Horizontal baseline in the stencil File->Shapes->Visio
Extras->Dimensioning-Engineering (US Units)

So my requests are:
- how do I move the 1D endpoints down on a shape
- how do I change the orientation of the of the endpoints from horizontal to
vertical on a 1D shape with the start point at the to left of the shape.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this.

 

[AlEdlund]

I found when I was doing it that it worked best for me to uses custom
stencils, with modified masters. Part of the modification was to go in and
manually name the connection points for ports (a single point), slots
(tuples), and a special case port which I called a connection. Each of the
connection point names then used a format of 'type_name_mod', where type was
either "port, slot, or conn" (underscores as delimiters). For slots the
format was "slot_name_side" with the side being 1 or 2. 1 was either left or
bottom and 2 was either the right side or top. Some vendor master shapes
only came in horizontal versions and I had to modify the shape as a vertical
shape. The last part of this video shows how it might be applied

al

 

[AlEdlund]

apologies, I intended to mention David Parker's great book which has some
examples in it on how you can use the generic racks and automate their
diagramming

http://www.amazon.com/Visualizing-I...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264195836&sr=1-1

al

 

[swichman2210]

Unfortunately I am not a programmer and am not trying to automate this. I am
just a simple Visio user who uses it to make simple drawings. I am just
trying to create a custom stencil with some of our equipment for my use. I
was able to borrow a copy of David Parker book. Unfortunately it does not
really answer my question that I can find. I need it spelled out, i.e change
property xyz on the shape sheet in this manner to get your desired results.

I looked at the YouTube video and it is doing exactly what I want. At 5:12
when the shelf is dragged from the stencil, it has a line shape at the bottom
which I believe indicates it is a 1D object. When it is dropped on to the
rack mount point it glues itself.

In a similar fashion, the card insert at 8:04 is also what I want to set up.

If you take a new Visio sheet and draw a two inch square box then convert it
to a 1D shape, you have the start and endpoints in a horizontal line in the
middle of the box. I want to change the appropriate location in the shape
sheet to move it to the bottom of the square. This is one time picture would
be much clear than word.

On my cards, I want to change the orientation such that start point is at
the top left and the endpoint is at the bottom left

To get my shape, I am importing a graphic so am at the mercy of Visio for
orientation of the start/stop endpoint orientation after I convert it to a 1D
object.

Thanks,

 

[billm]

swichman2210,

Did you get this figured out? I am trying to do the exact same thing.

Bill