Please Add Feature to turn shapes!

Question

The feature to turn shapes would be very helpful. i.e. to turn triangles, etc.

Comments

What is the problem for yEd Team to implement this function? I think it is so simple.

Mirror horizontal/vertical and rotate shapes are common functions in all drawing programs (except in this) and there are so many users those are asking this function, so why do not implement?

Please, listen us.

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I must have the ability to rotate and flip nodes. It is a fundamental feature of other graphics programs, and will boost the usability of this yEd tremendously.

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Please this feature is a MUST-HAVE. I like yED but without this feature, this program is useless for me and I reckon for many others, too.

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Here is another work around I found (but it is not efficient).
1 - Export your yEd as a .png file.
2 - import it into your favorite graphics program that has rotation capabilities and "crop and rotate" the item you need rotated.
3 - In the graphics program, select the rotated item and copy it to the clipboard.
4 - in yEd, select your drawing and Right Click and select Paste from System Clipboard.

 Yea, as I said it is not graceful, but it works.....

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I understand the need, and I have to work around things as well.  Bear in mind that this is a tool for drawing graphs, not a generic drawing tool.

Answer 1

There are two workarounds available to get rotated shapes in yEd:

1. Use "Import Symbol" to import a custom image/vector graphic with the desired orientation. To do that, open the Palette Manager ("Edit" -> "Manage Palette ..."), create a new section ("New Section"), select the newly created section in on of the lists to the right, and use "Import Symbols". Aside from SVG, raster image formats such as PNG, JPG, and GIF are supported.
This is the preferred way to get rotated nodes.

2. Create a rectangular node. Then create a triangle (or whatever shape you want to rotate). Drag the triangle over the rectangle. Right-click the triangle and choose "Convert to Label". While the triangle is selected, specify the desired rotation angle in the label Properties View. Finally, choose "No Color" for the *rectangle's* fill and line color.
Note, using this approach, edges have to be connected to the now invisible rectangle and will be clipped at the rectangle's bounds.

Creating a rotated triangle with approach 2, then exporting to SVG, and finally importing the generated SVG using approach 1 will probably give the best result.

Comments

hmm.... it's nice there are suggested workarounds, but I really hope you guys are working on this feature. The fact that all I have is an upward pointing triangle, but I can't get a left/right/down triangle without resorting to hacks, is disappointing.

Note that if you want to have text on a rotated triangle, you have to pre-rotate the text in the opposite direction before converting to a label and rotating. (But workaround #2 looks like it produces a passable result, if rather inconvenient.)

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Re:
Note that if you want to have text on a rotated triangle, you have to pre-rotate the text in the opposite direction before converting to a label and rotating.

No. Simply rotate an un-labeled triangle and add an additional label with text.

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A year and still no patch for this function...
I'm dumping this application and downloading another one.

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Please feel free to do so.

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please insert this function

this workaround don't work if you need a rotated shape and edge from this shape to itself

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The above workaround is independent of edges and should work always.
Could you please explain in more detail what you are trying to do, what your current result is (preferably with a screenshot and/or sample graphml), and what the desired result should be?

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I was able to generate a triangle as described in the workaround with caveats.

-Symbol is actually smaller than edges.
-Text scaling in it is somewhat awkward due to that.
-Overview box shows a totally different symbol. (Square)

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About why it would be nice to have a "rotate" and/or "mirror" function on symbols:
I just creating a few swimlanes with included flowcharts and use the flowchart symbols but not in there original meaning but near to them :-)
So I use userMessage and networkMessage to indicate the sending/receiving infomations from one lane to the other.
But this symbols are allways pointing to one direction and not back to the previous lane.
It would be very nice if I could simply mirror the symbols to point to the reverse direction

Any chance to have such a function :-)

Ingo

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yED is otherwise a perfect tool for modeling and making nice graphs quickly, but this feature is CRITICAL. Every crappy tool has it. yED has lots of unique and amazing features (especially the various layouts functions) now it needs to implement basic functions too.
Thanks again for the great work on the rest of the features of course.

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Please implement this feature.
It is the only one that many people who use yEd missed very much. Every time I launch yEd i  think about  the fact i cannot rotate anything and it really upsets me every time. And so feels many other users i know.

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I also needed this feature today but there was no way to rotate a triangle. Common, we have 2014, it should be possible by now. :) Please implement a node rotation!

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Indeed very important feature to be added. I switched all my figures from dia  to yED, but there is one Figure that I am having trouble with because I cannot rotate.
Everything else is just awesome!!! Please add the rotation feature.

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...and here it is December 2015 and we still don't have this very basic feature of vector drawing tools. I needed to draw a left- and right-facing triangle and can't do it.

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I just can agree with the posts here. I do not know if this is really so a big deal to implement the rotation of shaps. In our company we have to create a lot of block diagrams for our electronic projects. We tried a lot of different tools but none worked as well as Yed. Really the only feature that we are missing is the rotation of shapes. Creating a large number of shapes for every rotation angle in a custom import is not a nice solution for such a nice program. If the rotation of a label is implemented should be just a small step to implement as well the rotation of a shepe. It should be just another entry in the properties. Please add this feature and you will have enormous more success with this tool.

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I thought rotation was not supported because of the number of downvotes, but the second approach actually worked quite well for me. I draw a lot of hardware schematic diagrams for my work, and this tool seems to be most suited for my purpose than other ones.

Answer 2

The answer is to migrate to a new application.

 

Due to this never being implemented, the entire development team at our company has dropped yEd and moved to using applications which continue to have the comment sense of supporting *all* of the basics in geometric positioning features and tools. As a statistic; I represent 70 users, none of which would have taken the time to comment much less vote. Is the poll really a valid way of understanding the need/demand?

 

soapbox:

With the amount of work put into yEd, I cannot comprehend the lack of attention to this basic function that exists in almost every single layer-based editor. To that end, the fact that this had not been added to begin with speaks volumes and to not have implemented it by now has closed the book. We're much happier working with software even as inferior as Visio or even Fireworks/Photoshop (which we used to import yEd maps into just to get additional features such as making and rotating arrows.

 

My comments are an obvious reflection of anger as I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours developing in it waiting for this feature which we were sure was to be fixed. To have to move to a new application infuriates me, but its a move that I will be happy with in the near future. So long yEd/yWorks.

 

Comments

You are right, if the ability to rotate nodes is absolutely critical for you, yEd is not the right tool for your requirements. However, I would really like to see some sample diagrams that use so many different rotation angles that preparing pre-rotated node templates is not feasible. Especially since it is possible to prepare stencils with rotated shapes in Visio and import those into yEd's palette.

On the other hand, calling Visio and Photoshop inferior products does not really lent much credit to the whole anonymous rant. Both products are highly sophisticated applications by major software companies with considerably more development resources than yWorks GmbH.

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No. Rotation of an object is an extremely common object interaction and occurs in software across categories for decades now. It is, plain and simple, a missing functionality -- especially for this specific category of software. Many people ask for is because it is missing and an expected functionality.

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Just started using yed in the last 24 hours and was in love - until I found out that this fundamental ability is lacking.  Fundamental isn't a strong enough word.  Lacking this, yed is not a version 1.0 product yet.

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Same here. Go from Visio to yEd in order to try to work on free, accessible softwares, but this is highly prejudicial.

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Agreed. It is a terrible break in your concentration to use, say PicPick to grab a symbol, rotate it, store it as a png, create a new section and import it. About 50 mouse clicks where two would do. And then you forget why you needed it in the first place!

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Just started to work on yEd for a couple of hours and due to the lack of a simple shape's roataion, landed back here. ... bummer it is not available.. Consider a change of software as well.

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I would really like to see some sample diagrams that use so many different rotation angles that preparing pre-rotated node templates is not feasible.
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I'm working on plumbing diagrams. My node is a tee pipe fitting. To make my drawing visually consistent and more easily understood I want the legs (or is it arms) of the tee image pointed in the same direction as the direction of the edges, and the flow of the fluid through the fitting.

Now our diagram has gotten far too wide to fit on the page. Look! The are just a few edges in the center of the diagram connecting the left and right halves of the drawing. Let's select the right half, rotate it 180 degrees, and move it below the left half. We have a little work to clean up the connections from the left to the right side of the old diagram now top and bottom respectively.

This looks nice and fits on the page.

Oh crap! The symbol images no longer match the flow through the node! We need to go through the selection and choose the image with the proper orientation.

Repeat, ...

I was just starting to feel really good about a future with yEd. There is so much that's really done well. But, this is essential.

This is my second upvote. It is far more consequential than my first upvote regarding page headers and footers.

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I don't care rotating nodes because I'm using yEd to represent functional things and not to do artistic drawing or complex assembly plans... And its good enough at it !
Time saved by auto layouting is amazing.
Just thank you !

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@drew1horn Your can't be serious, right? What you are looking for is a CAD system, something yED isn't. You must be some of the guys that is hammering nails into walls with a screwdriver ;)

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CAD to draw pipes?  Overkill.  I can't believe anyone is defending this design flaw.  Such a basic functional requirement.

Answer 3

I also need this feature! A simple rotation cursor and a few rotation selections based on 45- and 90-degree angle transformations would be extermely valuable.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, we have decided not to support rotated shapes for the time being.

Comments

WHY?

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Part of the reason are technical implications, part of it are management decisions.

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I urge you to reconsider. Yed is a great diagram tool however the inability to rotate shapes severely limits it's usefulness. I'm unfortunately going to have to find an alternative.

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Wow, this one single feature, arguable cosmetic, is a showstopper for me.
Sad really, I had hoped this could replace PowerPoint or Visio for me.

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Well, I guess that's the final nail in the coffin. I was hooked on the application as a potential solution for diagramming, but the lack of basic rotation functionality is a deal killer for me. Not sure what your management team is thinking, but they need to think a bit more about this one. It's a critical and very basic requirement for any charting application, and to suggest creating four versions of every object is ludicrous. Ah well... they've set me free by making the decision not to support object rotation. LibreOffice it is. Sadly, it's more complicated, but it does fully support rotation.