I downloaded an OpenOffice Draw document with shapes I want to use (for drawing Apache Camel diagrams). I'm not very familiar with Draw, but I've used Visio; in Visio, there was a kind of file in which you could find/put shapes, then use to create drawings from those shapes. The shapes appeared in a panel left of and smaller than the drawing, and you could drag a shape from that panel to the drawing to put an instance of that shape on your drawing; the original shape remained on the smaller panel.
I think Visio called the file that held the shapes you could use a "template"; Draw has templates, but I haven't found a reference to them holding shapes to drag onto a drawing. I've tried looking it up, but am hampered by not knowing what terms Draw uses for these things. Can someone tell me whether this is possible in Draw, and what things I should look up help on? I hate to read a whole manual to find out how to use one feature, without even knowing if the feature exists...
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I'm sorry, I should have done better describing what I have tried. The file holding the shapes is an odg file; it opens fine as a document, and the program allows me to save it as a template, but the behavior of being a collection of shapes that I can drag onto a new drawing repeatedly, without having to copy a shape each time, is not there. That's the feature I'm trying to find.
My version (LO 5.2.3.3/openSuse) allows the creation of a new shape gallery theme (see: View>Clipart Gallery), and the addition of various graphic format files to that theme.
Also, in context meni of a shape, I can edit with external program.
So, I guess, you can save the shape(s) in a file and add it to My Shapes theme.
There will be two new files in ~/.config/libreoffice/5/user/gallery with the shape(s), to backup/restore (to a new installation) or distribution (to other computers).
Edit if your version of the office suite is lacking of that menu options, maybe you can extract the shapes from the *.odg file: unzip it and look for a custom *.sdv and *.thm file in the archive.
I'm trying to import cad model into blend and then make some storyboard on it.
Idea was to export xaml file from solidworks and then import it to blend.
File open in blend, model is displayed correctly and every thing works until i zoom/move or make any action that results in immediate program crash.
Xaml file is about 5mb, and outside blend works fine in my program i can rotate,zoom it freely with good performance.
Have anyone encountered similar problem, or have good method for converting cad->xaml.
I did when working on an augmented reality feature in a desktop aplication.
My solution was to convert the object to fbx format and use the XMA game studio controls to view it. Then I was able to do what I wish in blend.
I am creating an image map using ImageMapster from here.
I have created a photoshop image with several images that I have cut out from the original photographs. Each image is on a separate layer.
Now, I need to get the path coordinates of each object, and I don't want to hover over every corner and manually write down each coordinate.
Is there an automated way to get this path?
Maybe there is some application or web service whence I can send my image and get the path in return?
I have tried exporting each layer separately and then importing them into illustrator and vectorizing the shape (it keeps the shape in its original position), but I can't figure out how to get the coordinate path as text. I can export it to svg, but that isn't the same simple code needed for the css image map.
Ah! After googling image-map, much thanks to Sven for the idea (he got my +1), I found this thread here on Stack Overflow.
So here is my process.
Prepare the image in Photoshop with each object on a separate layer with a transparent background (this will make it easy for you when you do the tracing).
Save your photoshop file.
Open the Photoshop file in Illustrator using File...Open (works in CS4 and CS5) and make sure to allow the option to import Photoshop's layers as separate objects. After you open the file, make sure NOT to move any of the objects around - you need them to be in the exact same place as they were in the photoshop file so they can superimpose each other when rendered to the imagemap.
Use the Live Trace with custom settings. Use the black & white mode with the threshold all the up (255). This will produce a black silhouette of the shape. (You can also use "ignore white"). Push the Trace button. If you have many layers, you can save this new tracing pattern as a preset - I called mine, Silhouette. Now, I just click on a layer and choose Silhouette from the tracing buttons' dropdown menu.
Expand the shape and make sure it consists of only a single flat shape:
you can use the blob brush in illustrator to blacken over any unwanted white areas
no groups
no compound shapes (or it won't work) - which means you can't create cutouts.
You can tell the shapes are right when you click on them - you should be able to see the path itself with no "other" shapes involved (perhaps the blob brush additions) - just a single path. An easy method is this:
select the shape
ungroup if necessary
release compound path
unite (shape mode merges all shapes into one)
Don't crop your image - you want your shape to be in the same place in the image's area as in your original photoshop image.
Don't join all the shapes together, either.
The shapes should all be individual whole shapes, all in their original locations, each on a separate layer.
Now, open Illustrator's Attributes panel, and make sure to "show options".
Select your shape and in the "Attributes" panel, switch the "Image Map" combo box from None to Polygon. Make sure to add a url (it doesn't matter what you put; you can change it later - I just put "#" and the name of the shape so I can tell which one it belongs to in the image map code)
Do this for each of the objects.
Now, in the File menu, go to "Save for Web and Devices". Skip all the settings here and just push "Save".
In the "Save As" (the title of the window is "Save Optimized As") dialogue box, use "Save As type:" and select HTML Only(*.html) if you just want the code, or HTML and Images if you want the sillouhuette, too (they will appear in a folder called "images") - and note your save location.
Now go open that html file in notepad!
Voila! All the shapes will be rendered for you as a pre-made image-map - points path and even html code. Here is what it looks like when you open in notepad the html file you just created: For this demo, I chose a particularly complicated image - one which you would never want to estimate by hand, nor have to do twice!
Don't forget to place the actual image file somewhere in your site's images folder. You can save the psd file for later and add more "stuff" if you want, and repeat the process.
I was able to create the image map this way for my photoshop picture in just a brief couple of minutes. After you do it once, it gets easier for next time.
This has been bugging me for so long and I don't have Illustrator to be able to use the solution proposed by BGM, that I created my own Photoshop addon.
You can get it here: https://creative.adobe.com/addons/products/2389
It writes all your paths' points' coordinates to a text file.
Should work for CS6 and above.
The way I use it is I create a marquee, right click -> make work path, rename my path, [repeat], then just export coords via my addon.
If anyone's interested in the scripts behind it, you can have a look here: http://pastebin.com/8ugcAV3j
In case you make any improvements, please post them here so that other people may use them as well.
Hope this helps someone.
EDIT: added link to source script (was only in comments before)
I used this to find the co-ordinates of the outline of a shape to make image hotspots for links in dreamweaver. If you have something else in mind, then you'll have to ignore some of it. This works on a single layer so you may want to make a "flattened copy first", but I don't see why it wouldn't work on a multi layered image.
Use wand to highlight area you want. This will be different for different images.
Right click and hit Make Work Path. Use a suitable tollerance which is found by trial and error. I just use the most sensitive.
Do this for all areas in all of your images creating separate paths for each.
Click edit then export paths to illustrator and save file in sensible place.
Open the saved file in word. Ignore the bumf the the top and use replace to remove ALL LETTERS. Don’t worry about the paragraph characters.
Note that all of the work paths are exported in the same file separated by a blank line so must copied and pasted separately to be used for each hotspot.
After inserting your image. Start making a map in dreamweaver with a couple of co-ordinates then simply replace these in the with information from the illustrator file for each of the map areas to be produced.
I add my updated answer I had to find since adobe has eliminated HTML output in many instances, I work mostly with photoshop (CS4) and this is a perfect solution:
1) download following file: https://github.com/andyhawkes/ps-paths-to-imagemap
2) open your image in photoshop and select the form with the magic wand
3) right click and select 'make work path' (the lesser the px, to more accurate)
4) go to File -> Scripts -> Browse ... and select the script from the first step
that's it !! this script will open your texteditor with the coordinates ...
Something like this may be useful;
http://code.google.com/p/imagemap/
Copy your image into position, then plot.
creating an image map is really simple.
First we need to look at the syntax of the code
Let's create a div.If we want to position it at the right side of our page,we can just begin by writing
<div align="right">
After that, we import the image that we are gonna map.
<img src="" alt="" width="" height="" usemap="#nameofmap" />
Now we have to define the map structure.First lets assume that you want a rectangular portion of an image to act like a hyperlink.
<map name="nameofmap">
<area href="wherever I wanna take that.com" alt="" title=""
shape=rect coords="A,B,C,D"></map>
Now we close the div.
</div>
If the shape is circular,we use the syntax
shape=circle coords="x,y,radius"
If shape is polygonal, we use
**shape=poly coords="a,b,c,d,e,f,gh"
Now comes the big part:How to find the image map coords.
Very simple.Go to
http://www.image-maps.com
Browse your image file,click "Start Mapping your image",then you proceed, and then on the next page,click "Import Old mapping Code" on the right.then you get the coords.
After that, you can use FIREBUG to change the coords according to your specifications,because image-maps only hyperlinks the whole image,so use firebug to change the coords and adjust according to your requirements.
Have fun.
I don't feel as if what I'm asking is ridiculous. Would I be able to import an image of any kind (png, jpeg, etc) into visual studio and then define regions/hotspots to code as buttons? It would kind of be like an expression blend/silverlight thing but if I already had the design in an image format and I just need to put code behind it.
Expression Studio contains tools that can meet your requirements,
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Design_WhatIsExpressionDesign.aspx
For example, by using Design, you can import existing images and export XAML directly, which can later be used in your Visual Studio/Expression Blend projects.
You have to use such separate tools, such as Visual Studio does not have such features built in.
I have done this with an imagemap and hotspots over button graphics in an image the aspx page.
Is it possible to make a standalone/independent (from visio) program that is built on visio. Say, can i attach some of the design templates and visio drawing page on to my form??
Thanks
Visio supports VBA. With that, you can add all kinds of interactivity to your document.
And, you can embed visio in another program with the activex control.
Both of these methods require visio to be installed on the machine (if that's what you were getting at by the "independent" comment).
The Visio Viewer may or may not install the activex control or support VBA, I don't know.
There's a value stream mapping tool called SigmaFlow VSM that is an application built on Visio like you want to make. Basically the tool loads up Visio and strips out a lot of the Visio toolbars and puts their own UI in. Obviously it requires you have Visio installed.
There's a similar tool called eVSM that leaves the Visio UI in place, but provides a toolbar and templates and stencils for the purpose of building value stream maps.
I prefer the eSVM approach, where you end up giving the user the full ability to do whatever they want within Visio, while making the very specific task of Value Stream Map diagram creation easy.