Straight Lines

Crystal,

I can understand your team wanting to know how and why people use SL, and used correctly, that knowledge can help guide future development.

On the other hand, JC is correct, why he uses the tool should not have a lot of bearing on whether it works correctly or not. It's not really a question that he is trying to use a hammer to dig a hole, and can be shown a better way; it is that he's using a shovel, but it only digs holes that are 6' wide, and won't dig an 8" hole. Don't ask why he wants an 8" hole; that line of inquiry is the path to the dark side.

You run the risk of falling into Microsoft's arrogant thought that "If we can train the user to use the tools the way we know is best for them, then we won't have to fix them."

Mind you, I'm not saying you did that, just passing along a friendly warning to be careful not to.

Mike,

Not sure what is happening but holding down the shift key to draw a straight line works like a charm for me in Storyline.

Paul

I know what you mean. I've found it finicky  using the pie shape where I want to have one of the inside lines be perfectly horizontal or vertical. I don't have a solution and have just trying zooming in really close or making the object really large to allow more control and then shrinking it down. This happens even if you have the snap to grid turned off. Just seems finicky.

I use the Freeform tool when none of the other tools will do what I need: for example an irregular shape with straight lines and right angles.  But the reason why I'm using this tool is totally irrelevant.  The problem is the tool has no built-in functionality to help with drawing straight lines.  All I am really asking is to force the tool to draw straight lines (vertical and horizontal) and 90 and 45 degree angles when the shift key is held down.  Same kind of functionality you get with the rectangle tool that lets you create a perfect square when you hold down the shift key.  That's it!

I have made a feature request.

Thank you.

I guess what I meant to say is after you draw a line, when moving it I am used to it snapping to a grid or only moving 45 degrees at a time, was just wondering if that was an option?

Many times the line is just off by a little and you can notice a slight angle on it.

Thanks

I'm trying to draw straight lines with the freeform tool, but holding the shift key down doesn't do anything.  Is this normal behaviour for this tool?

When I use the same tool in PowerPoint, the shifts constrains to straight lines and precise angles.

Agreed: Please don't be a Microsoft. Don't try to fix your customers. Fix the product. 

This is a simple request and basic functionality in virtually all current applications with graphic editing capability: Hold down shift to force a line to be straight or at a 45 degree angle.

Crystal, would the object editing enhancements be implemented in SL3 or future SL4? Despite the annoying line thing since the SL1, since the last update I've realised, that snapping crashed at all.

If you check the options "snap to grid" and "snap to objects" storyline won't snap to objects, only to grid. When you move some objects (imagine you have aligned 20 lines inside some cube or something), these objects, instead of move as 'one group' moves separately, aligning to grid also. It basically goes wherever it wants. Aligning objects is now really big pain, almost everything needs to be corrected. It definitely shouldn't be that way, it worked quite fine since last update (however OEE looks really promising)

Thanks Crystal, of course I'm uncheking "snap objects to grid" now to align items. But I'm pretty sure, that

[quote]Snap objects both to grid and to other objects:
If the other slide object is not in line with the grid spacing, the object you're dragging will snap to the grid.[/quote]

Was opposite before last update :) That snap to other objects had priority over snap to grid. Also, I think before last update, when using arrows without selected "snap to grid", objects moved by X (defined by user) pixels, and with holding control - by one pixel. Now, when I have deselected "snap to grid" and I try to move object by arrow - it goes by one, not by X pixels :(

Maybe it's my imagination and it was default behavior since the beginning, but I'm working with storyline for 5 years know, and my muscle memory now gets confused :)

However glad to hear that problem is investigated with groups, as it is the most problematic one.

PS Crystal, since you are 'nearest' :) member of the staff, and we can't PM staff members - could I contact you somehow in private to discuss one idea for the forums, which I strongly believe will get positive feedback from the community and all of us using Storyline? :)

Hi Mike, 

I'm not experiencing any problems drawing straight lines either. Could you tell us a bit more about what's happening?

If Storyline is behaving oddly you may want to conduct a repair to resolve any unusual behavior.  Also, when creating, editing, and publishing Articulate Storyline courses, be sure you're working on your local hard drive (typically your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, such as file corruption, an inability to save changes, and loss of resources. See this article for more information.

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