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mattref
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Arrows overlapping nodes and node captions
Oct 19th, 2007 at 6:57pm
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Your demo program illustrates FlowChartX displaying a network diagram. In this demo example, I see arrows that actually sometimes overlap the caption accompanying some network nodes. I am having this same problem in my implementation of FlowChartX. Not only that, but sometimes the arrows go right over other nodes.

I am using Spring Layout, with the node distance set to 200. The num of iterations are set pretty high. Are there any properties I can use to prevent arrows from displaying this behavior? Maybe a way increase the z-index of the nodes so they are always above the arrows? I checked your programmers guide, but have failed to find something that does the trick.

Thanks in advance,

Matt
  
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Stoyo
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Re: Arrows overlapping nodes and node captions
Reply #1 - Oct 20th, 2007 at 8:56am
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If you are using additional attached boxes as labels, perhaps you have set their IgnoreLayout property to true? In that case the layout ignores them completely and does not care if the arrows overlap them. You can make the nodes stay above the arrows by setting the ZIndex of the arrows to 0.

Another option is to display both the text and the icon in a single box. You will need to create your own ShapeTemplate in which the text and image regions are arranged vertically without overlapping. For an example that defines a similar shape, check this topic:

http://mindfusion.org/cgi/Forum/YaBB.pl?board=fcx_feat;action=display;num=118823...

I hope that helps,
Stoyan
  
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mattref
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Re: Arrows overlapping nodes and node captions
Reply #2 - Oct 29th, 2007 at 10:14am
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Thanks for the response

I have tried your recommendation about the arrow ZIndex property. I was hoping for a property I could set from the FlowChartX Class level, but when I failed to find one, I added code to iterate through all arrows and set the ZIndex to 0 for each.

Problem is, this doesn't appear to be changing anything - I am doing this prior to the ArrangeDiagram() call. In this location, the arrow count is valid - yet, I don't see the expected behavior in the loaded diagram. I have also tried changing the zindex after the ArrangeDiagram() call, but to no avail.

What am I doing wrong? I expect to be able to move the boxes around and see that the arrows are always underneath, even when I remove my selection from the box.
  
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Stoyo
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Re: Arrows overlapping nodes and node captions
Reply #3 - Oct 29th, 2007 at 10:22am
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Could you save the diagram after changing the ZIndex of arrows and email it to our support address?

Thank you,
Stoyan
  
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mattref
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Re: Arrows overlapping nodes and node captions
Reply #4 - Oct 29th, 2007 at 11:04am
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Oddly enough, I just got it working. I was examining our code closer and realized the ZIndex changes would be more appropriate elsewhere, so I placed the code in this new location and viewed the flowchartX diagram once more. The arrows overlapped the boxes while selected, but once released they went underneath the boxes. This is perfect.

I placed the ZIndex code before ArrangeDiagram, but at the end of the  function where we programmatically prepare the diagram. I tried something similar before, but I guess since I was immediately after as opposed to within that function, it wouldn't take.

Thanks for the help.

**EDIT**
Actually ended up doing one better and just setting the Zindex after each CreateArrow call.
« Last Edit: Oct 29th, 2007 at 2:05pm by mattref »  
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