So I’m often needing to resize and rotate, say, a timber cross section symbol - a rectangle with diagonals…
I group these (for integrity) and then to edit I’d open the group and then resize the rectangle and then have to edit the diagonals to the new rectangle vertices.
And as a group the rotation becomes problematic trying to align the entire group with other line elements.
So I created this ungrouped timber symbol turning the diagonals into leaders…
Interesting approach. I presume this would become a scrapbook object?
Any reason not to use a scaled drawing? You could rotate it as needed, adjust the scale to suit the scale of the viewport it lays over and resize it to fit different sized timbers.
You could also make a set of scaled drawing symbols for the standard timber dimensions. Then you’d only need to adjust their scale to suit the application.
With the current project (a loft conversion) it’s not so much about resizability - it’s that when rotated a rectangle’s gizmo retains alignment with the rectangle axes and so aligning with angled drawing elements is straightforward - I tend to reuse linework groups that I have on the page, so if I need another timber symbol I just grab it from elsewhere on the page… and if it’s grouped then the gizmo doesn’t align with the rectangle axes but with the group axes.
So lazily grabbing an already rotated group from the page causes tedious editing.
But if I’m grabbing a scaled timber symbol from the scrapbook every time like you suggest Dave, then there is no issue with rotation.
Some scrapbook organisation to consider is in order perhaps…
Another experiment with leaders…
Not making any claims to a productivity hack or whether it’s practical - I just find it interesting.
I haven’t implemented this yet because I currently have the rounded box with a light grey fill and I don’t think that can be hacked.
I found myself grouping the text box and the rounded box together for easy manoeuvrability but then if I copied the group to elsewhere on the drawing and wanted to edit the text I’d have to enter the group and then enter the text box.
With this hack you just need to enter text box.
Of course I could have a template where I have these pre-made and pre-numbered off the paper area and just drag and drop them into the drawing.
Thinking about the fill problem…
Interesting…
So the fill problem that I describe above only works on screen and will show if I print as PDF.
If I export as PDF the fill does not show.
The fill is a curved line with two end points.
As soon as I give the line a third point…
The fill will export to PDF but destroys the ability to bodily move - the third point stays anchored to the page with the two end points moving with the text box.
