Draw - Snap Connector to Object Edge

[louhy]

Normally Draw’s Connectors snap to the top, bottom, left or right center points as shown here.

libre0.png

What I’d like it to do is snap to any arbitrary point on the edge of the object. Instead of being linked to one of those 4 connection points, the connector would be snapped to one of the edges, including a numeric value indicating how far down the edge the connector is joined to the edge. (This would ensure that if the object was resized, or moved, the connector still stays in the same relative location on the edge.)

For example the connection shown on the upper right here would be attached to the TOP edge. Internally, Draw would store a value to remember which part of the edge the connector is tied to (in this case below, it might be 80% out of 0-100).

libre1.png

For background, I’m trying to avoid the problem shown here when multiple connectors use the same connection point. I believe PowerPoint (and probably Visio) has the same issue, but it seems to be a fairly easily solved problem.

libre2.png

(Alternatively, an option to automatically add additional evenly spaced out connection points to object edges might also work, as long as object resizing doesn’t present a problem.)

Is there some way to get Draw to behave this way now? Or, would this be a good feature request?

[keme]

Well, you can add glue points to anywhere on the shape. The default relative position for glue points is proportional (so it will remain at the same relative position in the shape when resizing).

No good tool that I know of for even distribution of glue points, and certainly not for adding a set of evenly spaced points in one go.

[louhy]

Will look into that functionality (I assume it’s something that has to be manually done). Certainly some amount of automation here would be nice, though.