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As a long time Visio user who may be moving to LC I’ve desperately been trying to find a way to simulate Visio Guides in LC

LC has the vertical and horizontal guide lines, which is what Visio Guides get converted to when a VIsio diagram is imported, but as highlighted in

they are not equivalent. LC’s Snap To Guide only seems to work at the extremes of an object, not in the centre, not to connection points as Visio Guides do. Furthermore, with Visio Guides, moving the guide also moves the objects glued to them. This does not happen in LC

I can acheive near Visio Guide functionality using, say, the bracket style Containers. This allows me to move groups of objects in sync with each other vertically and horizontally. Objects can also be magnetized in both a horizontal and a vertical container which is similar to Visio objects glued to Visio Guides.

But

As far as I can tell the whole of an LC object has to be inside the bounds of a container in order to be Magnetized. Is this true as it will make even the use of LC containers difficult for some of my Visio diagrams? Ok I may be able to re-work the layout after import but ideally re-work needs to be minimal because I want to import hundreds of existing diagrams.

Even after I’ve converted to containers I then have the issue of not printing those containers. I haven’t learned if I can do that yet

Have I missed some other way of linking objects so that they move together in sync without first multiselecting them all?

Hi @Colin Foster

Thank you for your post! I believe that the Snap to Objects and Snap Objects to Grid is the closet functionality to Visio Guides. These options can be found under File > Settings > Document Settings > Grid and Snapping.

As for the containers, you care correct, the shapes will need to in the container in order for them to move together. Another option is to group shapes together. 

Let me know if you have any other questions!


An advantage of using containers is that an shape can be in more than one container, and therefore move in sync with other shapes in the container, depending on which container is moved. I’ve already seen this by creating a vertical and a horizontal container, put shapes in them, with one shape enclosed in the intersection of both containers. That shape moves horizontally or vertically with its corresponding vertical or horizontal siblings depending on which container is moved. This is the effect you get with Visio Guides which I use a lot.

I presume a shape cannot be in more than one group.


Hi @Colin Foster

Thank you for the reply! Yes, you are correct, a shape cannot be in more than one group. It sounds like containers are the most effective for your current use case. However, if you would like a more native functionality similar with Visio guides, I would recommend posting this as an idea in our Product Feedback section.


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