Re: Moving objects and keeping connectors to the outside world intact

[Andrey Repin <anrdaemon freemail ru>]

Greetings, Wolfgang Pausch!

> I am using dia to set up a diagram of about 200 entities, connected with
> each other by various connectors.

> A task I would like to perform right now is:
> - Select all objects in a rectangular area
> - Move them to some other place
> - Keep all connectors from those objects to the outside world intact.

If they are an actual CONNECTORS in the Dia's sense, they WILL still be
connected. Assuming you exactly MOVE the objects, not cut and paste.

> The behaviour I see is that once I move my selection, a connector from 
> an entity A inside the selection to an entity B outside the selection 
> looses the connection to entity B.

Then they were not connected to begin with.

> Simply because the connector end outside the selection isn't kept where 
> it is (which would end up in a different connector length or angle) but 
> moved with the selection.

Or you are moving connections instead of/along with objects. Don't do that.

> How can I avoid this IMHO rather unfortunate behaviour?  I have learned 
> that if I group two entities, and don't add the connectors to the group, 
> I get the desired behaviour.  But when setting up the selection to form 
> the group, the connectors to the outside world are added to the group as 
> well, which again results in the unwanted behaviour described above.

> Can you tell me how I can do this, or can't it be done in dia at all?

A simple solution is to place connections on a layer different from where your
objects are located, so that when you move objects around, you don't have even
a small chance to accidentally touch connectors.
The Dia layering mechanics a bit clumsy and require attention when working
with, but once you get the quirk out, it just works as expected.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Wednesday, May 4, 2016 04:00:52

Sorry for my terrible english...