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Re: Drawing a circular flow

Greetings, Marshall Feldman!


I'm new to Dia and have found it very useful. But I'm having one problem. I
want to draw an arc that starts and ends at the same node. I tried using the

You can do it if you connect it to something else. Example take a box
and you can illustrate a loop connecting an arc for example from the
right side of the rectangle to the top.

Thanks. I managed to draw an arc from the top of a rectangle to its 
side. So, by "something else" you don't just mean another object. 
Different sides of a polygon count as "somethings else." Is this 
behavior documented anywhere? Exactly what counts as (i.e., what is the 
technical definition of) "something else."


Each separate connection point counts as "something else".
I.e. you may connect a line from one side of the rectangle to another, but you
can't connect a line from THE rectangle (means, the default connection point,
that many shapes have, which is located (usually) somewhere around the center
of a shape) back to itself.


curved line connector and can almost make it into a circle, but when the end
of the line gets close to the original box, it seems to collapse on itself,
so instead of a circular flow it just looks garbled.


Weird. It works for me. Please specify your version and OS. Also
specify if you are using the arc primitive or an arc provided by a
symbol sheet.

I'm using Dia 0.97.2 on a Mac running OS X 10.7.5.



I don't know what you mean by "arc primitive" or "symbol sheet." The Dia 
Manual 
<http://dia-installer.de/doc/en/quickstart-chapter.html#making-diagram> 
refers to a "Toolbox." I'm using the Toolbox items for flowcharts. In 
particular, mainly rectangles and parallelograms. To connect the shapes, 
I'm using straight lines and curved arcs.


The "toolbox" is a collection of Dia built-in primitives and tools.
The selection arrow, text input mode, zoom tool, move tool, and an assortment
of very basic shapes that almost never used.
Everything below it is a custom-made shapes from collections that either
coming with Dia or installed by user, but they are ... "not as primitive".


Funny, when I made a simple diagram consisting of just a rectangle and a 
circular arc, everything worked fine for me. First I drew the arc from 
the top of the rectangle to its right side. Then I moved the arc by 
moving the tip (arrowhead) of the arc to the top side of the rectangle.


If that's really what you want to do... Sounds very confusing, much like the
arrow doesn't really tell anything and just hang outside the shape.


Finally, I made the arc more circular by moving its origin (the original
end of the arc, i.e. the one without an arrowhead) to the top line of 
the rectangle.



I ran into trouble when I had a more complex, busy diagram and just 
tried to add a circular arc to a rectangle.


For your specific case, I would recommend using Besier curve.
Should both let you snap it as much as you like, and control it's width and
height separately.


In case you're wondering why I want this, think of a bank ledger for a
mortgage. Every month, the bank adds interest due to the balance of the
mortgage. If there's mortgage payment (a separate flow transaction), the
balance is reduced. But the original ledger entry starts and ends with the
bank.


I understand you want an arc to illustrate something looping into
itself. is this a flowchart that you are trying to do, is it some
specific notation? Can you provide an example on the Web on what you
are trying to accomplish?


No, it's not exactly a flowchart. If you want to see an example, look at 
Figure 9.3 on p. 175 of this paper 
<http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/papers/9780230_203372_10_cha09.pdf>.


:D I like overcomplication of very simple things. Thanks for a good laugh.


This is a monetary flow diagram designed to show money flows in an
economy. To visualize an example, think of an economy consisting of two 
sectors, one producing consumer goods and one producing capital goods. 
The consumer goods sector buys capital goods from the capital goods 
sector, so money flows from the former to the latter. On the other hand, 
the capital goods sector buys capital goods from itself. So a portion of 
the money it receives circulates within the sector, or in other words, 
goes from the capital goods sector to itself. Besides showing flows 
between economic entities, I want to show flows within individual 
entities, such as those within the capital goods sector.





--
WBR,
Andrey Repin (anrdaemon freemail ru) 25.04.2013, <02:19>

Sorry for my terrible english...
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