The ORM Foundation

As I was working on a model today, I remembered another thing that I run into. How hard would it be to make objectification a right-click option on a fact type instead of being a distinct shape? When I am developing a model, I often go from Fact Type to Objectified Fact Type, and sometimes back again. Having to replace the shape, name it, and ...

Clifford, That is an interesting idea. So locking a role rigidifies the roles, connectors, and objects creating a unit that moves together. That's kind of what I was trying to describe, but sounds like an interesting approach to doing it and solves some of the problems my naive description would introduce. Very nice!

Based on my experience with v15 and the anticipated changes in v16 of the Visio stencil, here are some thoughts on how I use the stencil and some ideas for how it might be improved. With the changes to Fact Types in through v16, I find it much easier to re-position and rotate Fact Types. Combined with Flip Vertical, Flip Horizontal, and ...

I'll think about that based on my experiences modeling in the last couple of weeks and put them in a new thread. I think one has played out well :-) Thanks again for the great improvements to Fact Types.

Andy, It seems to make sense to me that any rotatable shape in the stencil, which appears to be just the Fact Type shapes, should only be able to be oriented at 90 degree intervals. Perhaps there is a need for diagonal or even freely oriented Fact Types, but I, for one, have never used Fact Types in anything but horizontal and vertical ...

This is terrific! Thank you for making such a great shape. The only thing I would add is the following: EventXFMod = SETF(GetRef(Angle),90 deg*(ROUND(Angle/90 deg,0))) This formula will force the shape to snap to 90 degree increments when using the free rotation handle. I also saw the context menu flags for the flip status. Were ...

Andy, Wow! Very nice. I really like the way the text moves to the right or left when rotating. Here are some observations... I'd like to see the text move up or down to clear the fact type when in the horizontal orientation. If I embed line breaks in the text, then in the horizontal position it still overlaps the fact type. I ...

I did know about the line breaks, though I admit I use them sparingly today because the text rotates with the fact type in versions before 13. To be fair, I just played around with a fact type rotated to vertical orientation. I created a fact type with the text "is related to" just as an example. In the default horizontal ...

I have to say that I don't like to way auto-rotation of text works in the Visio stencil version 13+. Specifically, I never use the style having the relationship vertical and the text horizontal. In my opinion that is a very space-hungry configuration and doesn't read well (ambiguous which way to read the roles when the text is orthogonal ...

I agree that is it is easy to apply a single color to both role boxes (with the fixed stencil), and still possible to apply color to individual role boxes, then that provides the ultimate flexibility needed. As for a context menu to indicate "derived" with some sort of visual notation, I think that would best be determined by feedback ...