How to I anchor text against layout.

Question

I'm trying to use the product as a tool to lay out professional flow charts and diagrams and under some circumstances I simply want to create a boiler plate to state details of the diagram, copyright, author, project, etc. When I do this the layout mechanism just picks everything up and rearranges it. Can you anchor a text node against layout movement?

Answer 1

Unfortunately not. Some layout algorithms have a specific setting to change only the current selection but Flowchart layout doesn't. I think, having this feature would solve this problem, too: http://yed.yworks.com/support/qa/708/

As a workaround, I can only suggest to cut-and-paste the elements that shouldn't be moved to another diagram tab while layouting.

Comments

Hmm, that's not really a solution. What I have done myself to work around the issue is to add a couple of text boxes on the bottom of the dominant group box, then join it using the normal arrow line. I have then changed the colour of the arrow line to be the same as the background. This makes the box stay for the most part in a sensible place, and I can drop successive boxes off the bottom. IT's a bodge, but does seem to work. I used a BPMN "Plain Start Event" to try and anchor the default state to the top of the chart, that seems to have worked...