Better cursor-connection behavior in free shapes at close distance

Not planned

Pph Bauwens

January 20, 2022 10:05

Mouse-connection behavior unpredictable at close distances with free shapes (but not only free shapes)

When drawing 'free shapes'  high-level views for general stakeholders it is often necessary to draw networks in the form of long vertical [or horizontal] bars using a drawn-out rectangle.

When you then draw additional rectangles to illustrate components of a solution you will want ot draw horizontal connections form the rectangles to the vertical bar.

Initially the connection will snap from the rectangle to the middle of the vertical bar.   You then must pull the connection endpoint on the bar to the point where the connection is horizontal between the rectangle and the bar.   When there is a relatively alrge distance, say 3 grid squares (of 10 divisions) this works fine,  but id the rectangle is placed closer to the vertical bar, say 1 grit square,  this progressively becomes far more difficult. 

The endpoint of the connection does no longer closely follow the mouse cursor and will unpredictively move at random along the bar, making a horizontal line almost impossible to achieve,  Only with a lot of patience and coaxing with the mouse .you eventually achieve a horizontal line, mostly by luck.  

 This is costing me disproportionally more time, and is impossible to explain to a newbee user of the [very useful]  free shapes.

A suggestion is to borrow a function from Visio in which you press the shift key when you want straight vertical or horizontal connections, thus switching to a simpler algorithm for this special case.

My educated guess is that the mouse-connection algorithm suffers from rounding errors or so in positioning when the distances become small

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• Official comment

  

  Ameya Sapre

  May 22, 2023 14:04

  Hello all,

  Due to lack of community interest and upvotes, this will not be considered as a roadmap topic.

  Thanks,

  Team ValueBlue
• 

  MG || Gemeente Tilburg

  January 20, 2022 10:23 Edited

  Hi Pph,

  I also encounter this issue every now and then. Disabling the magnet symbol usually solves a lot of these issues, since you are more free in placing objects and relations.

  Still, the "Visio option" would be nice as well (although I believe there is another wish for this already).

  EDIT: See here https://valueblue.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360009952119-BPMN-Views-Automatically-create-or-apply-straight-angled-cornered-lines-

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