Re: Does everyone make large objects, or is it just how I am using Dia?

[dunn <dnaughton dunnamin com>]

Thanks, Mike!

I actually didn't have any files or shapes to share because I was about to create some, but if I have other questions, can we add an attachment on the mailing list messages?

I've actually been working on figuring out why the shapes are coded the way they are. I copied some into my local shapes folder and couldn't figure out why my changes would not show up.  It took a lot of tweaking thinking it was not having extents on the svg part, whether line thickness were not being accepted because in some shapes they're stated with reals, other integers, and some not at all. It turns out there was something to do with the prefix on the name of the shapes.  I still couldn't state definitely what I had wrong. It will take some more testing to figure out how the sheet file finds the shapes (since I noticed this when I got a 'Duplicate Object" error after a couple of hours of confusion :-!).  (My file was still showing me the one I had copied even though I had created a new sheet and renamed the shape. Sheesh!)

Thanks for the double-click on the tools tip.  I read the whole manual before asking, but must have missed it.  Some let me change the Draw Background, Text Padding, Text Alignment, Font, Font Size, Flip Horz & Vert, and others just the Draw background and the Flips.  None in the BPMN Sheet let me change the default Lineweight.

I haven't really used Dia before trying to customize it though, and it wasn't until I had made my first shape that I learned everything is brought in at the same size anyway.  (It would be nice to learn we can change this with Python on insertion or something!)

So apparently, it is advice well taken that if I am rigid about font size or many other things, I might be in trouble!

I wonder if there is anymore information than the manual and the samples on how to avoid name conflicts and what's supposed to be in the online XML, and how the seemingly cryptic attachment points are measured. I'll get the points, but I don't know about the xmlns= part.

Thanks again,
   -- Dunn

On 07/25/2014 12:11 PM, Michael Ross wrote:

You should probably share the files of representative shape for people to talk sensibly about the.

Shapes are created within a 1cm square area (or were when I last tried to make a shape).  If you made them larger, then that could be the explanation.

However the shape was sized, you should be able to scale it to whatever size you want.

If you double click on a tool, a properties dialog will arise where you can set the default properties - such as line weight.   I never worry about font size and just adjust font and page scale to get a readable output.  This is the normal workflow for Dia.  I am not sure what difficulties you will cause yourself by being rigid about font size.

Mike

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 2:44 PM, dunn <dnaughton dunnamin com> wrote:

Howdy!

I am just learning Dia and was about to try my hand at making some shapes.  I notice the shapes I have used in Dia are very large, the borders are very thick at 0.1cm and the font is also large at 22.68pt (5/16").

As I make my shapes, I would want to make them so they fit 9 pt font size (1/8" tall), which is what I consider to be the perfect size (so studies say for us CAD users), and the borders would be 0.5 mm thick instead of 0.1cm.  This means I would make much smaller shapes.  Would anyone be able to use those shapes, or want to?

Are my shapes just very large because I have a default font setting somewhere that is setting my font so large?

I did see in the faq that people questioned why there fonts were too small, so I don't know if for some people everything comes out smaller.  Could everything be large because their printing makes things smaller?

Thanks for the program :-).

   -- dunn

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