Your memory's correct. You can drag shapes onto the page, and drag arrows on to connect the shapes. The arrows normally only connect at the middle of the top, sides, or bottom so you might have wanted more flexibility (sometimes I do!) but once they're connected they stay connected even when you drag the shape around. And the lines do make little "humps" if they cross over each other.

In fact checking now I see there are actually some templates that include shapes already connected on the page for you, then you can delete / move / add more as needed. I never noticed this as I always prefer to start with a blank page 😊 but there seem to be a few options.

If you (Charles) have access to it, open it up and you should get prompted with some starting options including "Basic Flowchart".

Deborah

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Joe Hourclé
Sent: Monday, 24 April 2023 10:19 am
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] data flow chart diagram

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>
> On Apr 23, 2023, at 5:18 PM, charles meyer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Joe...
>
> Would I be able to just type in text in diagram boxes in Visio?


It’s been 20 years since I switched from Visio to OmniGraffle for my diagraming, but I seem to recall there being a UML template set (they might’ve called it a template library), where it had the shapes, and you could drag them onto your document and then label them… and the labels would move with the shape if you moved it.

I think that the lines stayed attached between the objects, too, so you could connect them up with arrows, and then drag the components around so they made good use of the space.

I *think* the lines in Visio would also make a little hump if they crossed, to show they weren’t actually connected.  But I know there was something about the lines for why I switched. (Maybe it was the ‘magnets’ in OmniGraffle, which let you set how the lines attached to the objects)

-Joe

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