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Creating Graphic Line Ends

How to create and edit Line End shapes

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Written by Ashok P
Updated this week

You can create and edit the line end shapes that come with SI. This requires some basic to advanced Visio skills.

There are two parts to creating line ends.

#1 How to create a new line end

1/ Start Visio in a new or existing SI project.

2/ Go to Visio Drawing Explorer > Developer, and select the Drawing Explorer checkbox.

3/ Right-click the Line Ends section and click New Pattern.

4/ Give the new pattern a name; in this case, I am creating a 5-port Phoenix connector.

5/ Select the Line end and Scaled checkbox, and Behavior is selected as shown below.

11-14-2013 3-01-09 PM.jpg

6/ Find the new shape name in the Drawing Explorer and double-click on it to open the edit window.

11-14-2013 3-04-50 PM.jpg

7/ Using the Visio tools, draw the shape you want represented. The size of the shape should be around 4" wide and 1.5" tall, but not super critical.

8/ When you get the shape the way you want it to look, you need to flatten it so that it is just a single layer.

This is done by selecting the entire shape and using Developer > Operations > Combine.

9/ Next, you need to relocate the PinX to the right of the shape.

This is done in the ShapeSheet Shape Transform section. Change the LocPinX formula from Width*0.5 to Width*1. This will align the shape to start where the line ends.

11-14-2013 3-27-30 PM.jpg

10/ Close the shape edit window and click Save.

11/ Test the shape by dropping a finish wire on the page.

a/ Double-click on the wire shape to open the edit product window.

b/ Go to the Specifications tab.

c/ Add the name of your shape (PHOENIX-5 in this example) to the Manage Terminals list. The name should be EXACTLY the same as the shape name.

12/ Save and Close, Save and Close, Update and Close.

specs_tab.png

If everything was done right you should have a new Phoenix-5 line end and text at the end of the wire shape.

11-14-2013 3-41-48 PM.jpg

#2 How to distribute the new custom line ends

Visio custom line line ends can only exist in a drawing. To distribute, we created some code that takes a special custom shape and uses that to populate new drawings at startup. Too complex to explain the why, but here is the how.

1/ Right-click the Wire Shapes section of the shape tree and choose Open Stencil.

open stencil right.png

You should see something that looks like this.

2/Right-click Wire Shapes and click Edit Stencil.

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11-14-2013 3-53-07 PM.jpg

3/ Double-click the Line End Transfer shape. This is just a container to hold the line ends.

4/ Expand that shape vertically so you can zoom in and see the individual connectors.

5/ Open the shape by right-clicking and Group > Open Group.

6/ Go to the last shape on the bottom and copy the last shape. Select the shape, hold the Ctrl key, click the shape, and drag down. Should look something like this.

copy bottom shape.png

7/ Right-click on the shape you just copied and select Format Shape.

8/ Expand the Line section of the window and choose the new shape name you created from above for both the Begin Arrow type and End Arrow type, and click OK.

format shape line.png

8/ When you click OK, you should see the new line end.

9/ Double-click on the line in the middle, this will highlight the text. Change that to the proper name from above; in this case, it is Phoenix-5.

10/ Close the Group window.

11/ Close the shape window and click Yes on the update line end transfer. This will save the Line End Transfer shape to the stencil.

12/ Save the stencil by clicking on the floppy disk icon.

13/ Restart the current drawing or start a new drawing and test to see if it worked.

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