How to create a Led-Pixelmap ? connected rectangles don`t show the arrows as there`s no gap-(?)

Question

Hallo yEd,

I created a pixel accurate rectangle (96 by 96 pixels) field (960 by 960 pixel altogether) without gaps in between.

Want to name them in the way of the datapath, like 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, with the special feature that I want to have arrows in rectangle 1, e.g. from the middle heasding towards the direction of the next number (in this case number 2).

I can create that but there must be an easier way to do so & the arrows are unvisible as long there are no gabs between the rectangles & I dont know how to bring them in the front.

please help me out asap

&

thanks for the wonderful program,

 

Heiko

Answer 1

Your observation is to the point. When there is no gap between your rectangles, no edge path will be rendered. This is due to the way how edges are rendered by default. In a nutshell, the visual representation of edges is being shortened so that they appear to start and end at the border of their nodes (even when they are actually connected to the center).

Although you can change the painting order (z-index) of edges and nodes in the Preferences... dialog (Display tab, option "Paint Nodes over Edges"), edges won't show up as going from center to center (or even center to border). Instead, you will only get the arrowhead being painted at the border of the target rectangle.

Answer 2

One way to do this is to use drop shadows to make it look like the arrows terminate in the middle of the nodes when they really terminate at the corners.  For 96x96 pixel nodes, make them a little smaller like 94x94 to leave a gap, set the shadow offsets to 48, and change the colours of the node and drop shadow.  Build up your grid with an extra row and column.  Now draw the edges with the start and end points moved to the corners of the nodes.  You will always span across nodes to get the edges to show, never between adjacent nodes (that's why we need the extra row and column).  Select all of the nodes and set the fill colour to no colour.  Set the extra row and column drop shadows to no colour.

Comments

Nice idea!