Add Element Position and Size to the Appearance Tab

Started by Manj75, August 23, 2021, 17:11:40 PM

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Manj75

Is it possible to add an enhancement to show the position and size of the selected element in the Properties -> Appearance tab?

Currently, there is no way to determine the (x, y, width, height) of a selected element, which would be very useful to have.  This relates to my post (https://forum.archimatetool.com/index.php?topic=1091.0) regarding fetching these details in jArchi which is missing, however you can set them.  So, if in a script I want to copy the positions and size of another element in another view I cannot do this either by, 1) checking in Archi tool and 2) getting object details in jArchi.

It would be nice to see in the Appearance tab as shown in the attachment and I can raise a feature issue if you think this is acceptable.

Phil Beauvoir

#1
Quote from: Manj75 on August 23, 2021, 17:11:40 PM
Currently, there is no way to determine the (x, y, width, height) of a selected element, which would be very useful to have.  This relates to my post (https://forum.archimatetool.com/index.php?topic=1091.0) regarding fetching these details in jArchi which is missing, however you can set them.  So, if in a script I want to copy the positions and size of another element in another view I cannot do this either by, 1) checking in Archi tool and 2) getting object details in jArchi.

As answered in that post, object.bounds is the getter.
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Manj75

Yes, response in other post has resolved that issue from a jArchi script point of view, but I still feel the feature as described in this post would be useful natively although not a priority and nice to have.

Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie

Hi,

Quote
Currently, there is no way to determine the (x, y, width, height) of a selected element, which would be very useful to have.

Well, I personally don't see why or how this would be useful outside script debugging (which then could be solved through jArchi itself). Could you provide real use-cases relying on this feature ?

Regards,

JB
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ms

The reason I'd like this is so I can more easily make the elements in my views a consistent size.  Especially inside a group, I'd like them all to have the same width (this is workable using drag resizing) and the same height (this is very hard using drag resizing - the lock-to-grid behavior seems touchy/weird.).  Or for top-level central concepts in a model, I sometimes want them to be the same size so that elements that are bigger because they have longer names don't look more important just for that reason.

(Sometimes in a group I want the same height for elements whose name needs one line of text, and the same height for elements whose name needs two lines of text.)

Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie

Hi,

Quote from: ms on August 30, 2021, 10:56:07 AM
The reason I'd like this is so I can more easily make the elements in my views a consistent size.

Maybe you're not aware of it, but there's a useful function for that in Archi: select several elements, ending by the element you want to use as a "template". Then select menu View > Position > Match Width/Height (can also be accessed through the toolar, usually on the far right).

Regards,

JB
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