Try setting the arrow's starting orientation. For example if you want the arrow to go down first, you should specify Orientation.Vertical. The following code illustrates this.

arrow.PrpStartOrientation = MindFusion.FlowChartX.Orientation.Vertical;
arrow.UpdateFromPoints(); 

You cannot create 1-segmented cascading arrows, but you can create a 2-segmented arrow and make sure its last two points coincide. The following code creates a box and a cascading arrow that goes on the left of it:

Box b = flowChart.CreateBox(20, 20, 20,20);
Arrow a = flowChart.CreateArrow(b, new PointF(10, 30));
a.SegmentCount = 2;
a.Style = ArrowStyle.Cascading; 

Stoyo

Ok, we can make Dynamic + Cascading arrows change their initial orientation automatically.

Won't a 1-segment arrow emulated by a 2-segmented arrow with two last points coinciding create an arrow look like:

________________V

(i.e. the actual last segment (v.small/zero length) will actually be pointing down/up and the arrowhead/tail will show in the wrong direction.)

I've been asking our alpha-test users and the biggest complaint they've got is manipulating the cascading links.

Some of the things they're coming back to us with are:

* They expect grabbing the control point of a left-down arrow and dragging it to the other corner should reverse the direction and make it a down-left arrow.

* When there are excess control points, moving two onto the same place should either make them into one or remove them altogether if appropriate (e.g. when left-down-left becomes left-.-left.)  This seems to happen sometimes when the links are _exactly_ over the top of each other, but with snap-to-grid enabled, it isn't actually possible to do that to arrows that aren't already on the grid.

I've been thinking it through and I'm not sure what the best way to handle cascading arrow manipulation, but the response I'm getting is that the current system isn't very intuitive and leaves them frustrated trying to make the arrow do what they want.

Thanks.

That'll definitely help.

Stoyo,

I've been doing some testing and extensive discussion with out users over the last day or so.  I thought I'd just drop a quick note to point out the most common comments/issues we've had mentioned to us relating to the links:

* when the user drags a control point they expect it to do _something_, even if it's not the prettiest result.  It's difficult for a user to intuitively understand that to break the link up they need to drag from a line, they go for the control point automatically.

* The idea of coinciding control points being removed is great, but one are this doesn't seem to work well is when the end point is snapped-to, at which point the snap-to point isn't on the grid so the two end control points aren't exactly coinciding and the arrow ends up with an weird arrowhead/tail that is conspicuously wrong.

* It is true that a one-segment arrow can be faked by a two-segment arrow with two control points over each other.  There are problem with this however, in addition to the end-point snap-to issue above, that once this is done the arrow is no longer able to be manipulated from that end.  I'm assuming the internal logic is that the middle point is higher in the z-order and it can't be moved (see first point) because to do that would either break the link/s or move the end-point.

* There were many requests that it should be default behaviour that the start and end points are defined as close as possible to be 'away' from the edge of the object.  I'm not sure how this would be acheived, but playing with other packages like Visio give some idea of a workable method for handling this.

Hope that clears up the issue a bit.

Thanks for the help so far,
Paul.

Sorry for being a bit vague there.

Yes, the two-segment cascading is exactly the case we're dealing with, and the user expectation is that the control point will follow the mouse pointer in a drag where it now resolutely refuses to do so -- adding segments is the only choice I can think of.

I'll try to explain the last one in a bit more detail.  I would like the link to do what it can where appropriate to make sure that if a link is snapped-to the edge of an item at source and destination, that both of those first and last segments are 'awa'y from the edge of the item.  So if a user rags the start of a unconnected link and lets it snap on the bottom edge of an item, then the first segment should be automatically down.  Then if they drag the end of that same arrow and snap it to the right of another item, the link should finish with a right direction segment, even if requiring adding segments.

I hope that last makes sense.  To be honest I'm still trying to work out how the best way to handle these situations -- and no package I've tried seems to do this perfectly (there probably isn't an ideal method) but Visio seems to handle things in a reasonably effective way, so much so that almost every comment I've gotten back is 'could we make it work just like visio does it...'

Thanks again,
Paul.