Some Updates I'd Like To See

[Kirk Markarian]

ifu Team:

Now that I've been working with the program (and enjoying it thoroughly), there are some changes that I would like to see - from a graphic design standpoint.

1. When adding gradients from one process to the next, there seems to be an overlap of color that occurs during intersection. The effect looks transparent. When two lines cross, the resulting color in their overlap looks darker than either color alone.

2. When changing colors of flow lines, unless I'm mistaken, I am unable to change the color of several at a time, if I want to make several of them the same color. A palette of color similar to the process color board (which also happens to allow color to be applied to multiple processes at once).

3. Adjustable grid size.

4. Snap to grid could apply to processes - rather than dragging the process to a particular dimension at will (to avoid fine motor movement), a snap to grid option would make changing the size of the shape easier.

5. Other shape options.

I do hope I'm not being too demanding. I'm able to make these charts quickly, and it would be nice to see these options available to utilize.

Thanks,
Kirk

[Jörn Zietz]

Hi Kirk,

thank you for sharing your ideas. We like to get feedback from the users of our software.

Comment to point 1:
Can you please check, if the color of the process has set a transparency value other than 0. If so, you get a kind of mixture of the color for crossing flows. If this is not the point, you can attach a screenshot to this post or sent it to our support mail address.

Comment to point 2:
Ok, I think this is a case which does not occure very often. Maybe an easier way is to add the color to the color palette of the unit type (panel 'Controller', click on button 'Edit Unit Types', edit color palette). So you can select this color quickly via the combo box in entries window.

Comment to point 3:
That would be an easy to implement feature.

Comment to point 4:
Have you switched on the toolbar button 'Snap to Grid'?  This affects all drawing operations. Are you looking for a funktion, where you select some (unsnapped) elements and select something like 'Snap with resize elements to grid'?

Comment to point 5:
Do you have some examples for other shape options? Do you want see more shape kinds? Do you want to get more properties or settings for existing shapes?

Best regards,
Jörn

[Kirk Markarian]

OK!

1. Well, turns out I did have the processes set transparently - not sure how that happened. Maybe I inadvertently set them that way. Thanks for catching that!

2. That's also a good idea, unfortunately my task was to have a constant color flow from left to right of different colors, regardless of the actual units used. I will try to push that on a different chart.

3. Well, neat!

4. Well, kinda. I do use the snap to grid and the alignment functions. They're great. That being said, I'd like to use the idea from point #3. If I had adjustable grids, I wouldn't have to zoom in to snap. I also wouldn't have to try as hard to get processes to be the same size. A bigger grid unit = quicker re-sizing and quicker visual adjustment to get the processes to be the same size. This would be similar to using Adobe Illustrator.

5. Well, I'm a big fan of circles. If I look on larger visual data plots, there are dots and circles. This may or may not be worth anybody's time. I know I can place pictures in the program, but I'd rather work in the program without accessing others until the very end.

6. Is exporting to SVG a future possibility? Adobe Illustrator handles SVG fairly well. I'm sure you know that it's the new craze and all that. It can be used in HTML programming AND it's vector-format. Since it's open source, maybe there wouldn't be any legal issues involved. EMF's are hard to work with. When I export the EMF file from Microsoft Word to a PDF (a longer multi-step process than I expected), it takes words that are too long and replaces them with and ellipses. That forces me have to retype everything. Also, Microsoft Word flattens the text when exporting as a PDF. So, I bring it into Adobe Illustrator and re-adjust everything. Whew!

Sorry for all of the ideas/suggestions. I'm also working in D3.js, but I am not adept at javascript yet and while I really enjoy it, I can get lost for days in the programming.

Thanks,
Kirk

[Jörn Zietz]

Hi Kirk,

thanks again. As I have said before, feedback is always welcome - also ideas and suggestions.

2. I do not have an idea, how it should look. So it is hard to give any advice. Colors are assigned to entries (materials, energy...). Color palettes for faster access and automatic assignment on creating the entries are bound to unit types. If you need to change the color of many entries (with the same color) it might be easier to unse just one entry. The labels can be generated in Microsoft Excel and taken via Live Linked to e!Sankey.

4. It is also possible to synchronize the the size of elements. Select multiple elements and select 'Set size to this element' in context menu.

5. I do not understand what you mean with circles and dots. Circels (more general Ellipses) can be drawn in e!Sankey. But they are just for illustration. There is no data context (e.g. size of circle is equivalent to some quantity value).

6. SVG export we have already in our system but we have not sceduled it so far.

Best regards,
Jörn

[CotyC]

ifu Team:

Now that I've been working with the 3 week diet program (and enjoying it thoroughly), there are some changes that I would like to see - from a graphic design standpoint.

1. When adding gradients from one process to the next, there seems to be an overlap of color that occurs during intersection. The effect looks transparent. When two lines cross, the resulting color in their overlap looks darker than either color alone.

2. When changing colors of flow lines, unless I'm mistaken, I am unable to change the color of several at a time, if I want to make several of them the same color. A palette of color similar to the process color board (which also happens to allow color to be applied to multiple processes at once).

3. Adjustable grid size.

4. Snap to grid could apply to processes - rather than dragging the process to a particular dimension at will (to avoid fine motor movement), a snap to grid option would make changing the size of the shape easier.

5. Other shape options.

I do hope I'm not being too demanding. I'm able to make these charts quickly, and it would be nice to see these options available to utilize.

Thanks,
Kirk

Adjustable grid sizes would be nice.

[Jörn Zietz]

Hi CotyC,

thank you for your post. It is good for us to get feedback, if feature ideas will be helpful for many users :-)
We have added this feature to our list of feature requests.

--
Best regards,
Jörn

[lazydog]

ifu Team:

Now that I've been working with the program (and enjoying it thoroughly), there are some changes that I would like to see - from a graphic design standpoint.

1. When adding gradients from one process to the next, there seems to be an overlap of color that occurs during intersection. The effect looks transparent. When two lines cross, the resulting color in their overlap looks darker than either color alone.

2. When changing colors of flow lines, unless I'm mistaken, I am unable to change the color of several at a time, if I want to make several of them the same color. A palette of color similar to the process color board (which also happens to allow color to be applied to multiple processes at once).

3. Adjustable grid size.

4. Snap to grid could apply to processes - rather than dragging the process to a particular dimension at will (to avoid fine motor movement), a snap to grid option would make changing the size of the shape easier.

5. Other shape options.

I do hope I'm not being too demanding. I'm able to make these charts quickly, and it would be nice to see these options available to utilize.

Thanks,
Kirk

Different shapes (option 5) would be a nice touch.

[pbeilschmidt]

Hello lazydog,

additional shapes are available in the 'Shapes' dropdown menu in the toolbar: circle, ellipsis, rectangle, rounded rectangle, line.