billlee
2007-08-09, 12:21 AM
I've just bought myself a copy of Omnigraffle Pro after not having it for two years; having last used version 3 (Thanks to the Omnigroup for their support of Apple Engineers such as Steve Hayman).
Now I remember one thing that really frustrated me at the time, and still continues to frustrate me (now that I am back using Omnigraffle). I like to add custom magnets to my (irregularly shaped) pictures that I have imported from Photoshop, and connect lines to these points. The problem is that the lines sometimes are impossible to manoeuver in the right direction, continuing to want to connect from one direction where you really want them to connect from another.
So after searching the documentation, and this forum, and not finding any workarounds that resolve my problems, I am making the following suggestion:
Magnet points should have definable connection arcs. One of the characteristics of each magnet point should be the minimum and maximum angle that a line is allowed to connect to that point. The user interface could be a circle showing the allowable arc, with a pair of dots on the periphery which allows the allowable arc to be set. A line can only connect to the magnet point throught the allowable arc, and will attempt to adjust itself to fit into the allowable arc.
This would really be useful also when using curved stroked lines which often don't quite start out in the direction you would like them to, and thus offend my sense of perfection. :-)
I have attempted to attach a picture showing an example of my problem with magnets. It's a picture of an Mbox with transparency, with a number of custom magnets placed on the periphery of the actual shape, not the enclosing box. Connection to magnet points 1 and 3 do the right thing, but the connection to point 2 doesn't allow me to avoid crossing the picture and come off the object to the left like the line from point 1 does. Allowing me to define magnet point 2 to only allow connections to come from a bearing of 240° to 359° and would fix the recalcitrant line issue.
Bill Lee
Now I remember one thing that really frustrated me at the time, and still continues to frustrate me (now that I am back using Omnigraffle). I like to add custom magnets to my (irregularly shaped) pictures that I have imported from Photoshop, and connect lines to these points. The problem is that the lines sometimes are impossible to manoeuver in the right direction, continuing to want to connect from one direction where you really want them to connect from another.
So after searching the documentation, and this forum, and not finding any workarounds that resolve my problems, I am making the following suggestion:
Magnet points should have definable connection arcs. One of the characteristics of each magnet point should be the minimum and maximum angle that a line is allowed to connect to that point. The user interface could be a circle showing the allowable arc, with a pair of dots on the periphery which allows the allowable arc to be set. A line can only connect to the magnet point throught the allowable arc, and will attempt to adjust itself to fit into the allowable arc.
This would really be useful also when using curved stroked lines which often don't quite start out in the direction you would like them to, and thus offend my sense of perfection. :-)
I have attempted to attach a picture showing an example of my problem with magnets. It's a picture of an Mbox with transparency, with a number of custom magnets placed on the periphery of the actual shape, not the enclosing box. Connection to magnet points 1 and 3 do the right thing, but the connection to point 2 doesn't allow me to avoid crossing the picture and come off the object to the left like the line from point 1 does. Allowing me to define magnet point 2 to only allow connections to come from a bearing of 240° to 359° and would fix the recalcitrant line issue.
Bill Lee