Network Atlas: How to create square Frame to gather certain nodes inside ? Offered shapes are filled up !

kiwi

Network Atlas:

How to create square Frame to gather certain nodes inside a map ? Offered shapes are filled up !

Thank you

stuartd

There are 2 (well 3 but one is just a variation) ways that I know of but none of them are perfect.

1. Use a text box and delete the text inside it.
   Downsides:
   - when you later edit or add to the map, these boxes will randomly move and you have to re-site them
   - if you don't add the boxes first then they "mask" anything placed in to it. By this, I mean you can't further edit a node on the map that sits in in the box without moving the box out of the way first, do your edit, and then put the box back.
   
   
2. This is a variation on the above ... add a text box, delete any text and then drag the handles so the lines merge into one. Duplicate until you have all 4 sides. However, the same caveat as in 1. applies in that the lines will just randomly move, but at least you can edit anything in the 'box'.
   
   
3. Create the background elements you need in Visio or a drawing app, laid out as you need them and then save them as a JPEG. Then set that JPEG as the maps background. Add and edit nodes to your hearts content.
   - downside is if you need to make the box larger at a later stage to add more nodes you will need to recreate the image.

Network atlas is, as you may surmise, an old old tool that hasn't had much love over the years, and some of the bugs / quirks have been around for eons (or so it seems). What I can tell you is that these quirks will not be fixed as NA is set to be deprecated at some point in the future - no, I don't know a timeline for that. Orion Maps is the way forward, but for us that has one basic issue that needs to be addressed before we can even begin to contemplate using it.

Hope this helps.