The behavior of built-in line patterns is different from the behavior of custom line patterns in Visio

In Microsoft Visio, you notice that the behavior of built-in line patterns differs from the behavior of custom line patterns. Additionally, you experience the following symptoms:

• When you increase or decrease the length of a line that uses a built-in line pattern, the detail of the line pattern does not change. The line pattern is truncated when the end of the line is reached.
• When you increase or decrease the length of a line that uses a custom line pattern, the detail of the line pattern changes depending on the length of the line. The whole pattern fits into the length of the line. The line pattern is not truncated.

This behavior occurs because line patterns in Visio are processed as follows:

• The instances of built-in line patterns are truncated to fit the line. The width of the components in the line pattern is always the same, regardless of the length of the line.
• The instances of custom line patterns are scaled to fit the line. The width of the components in the line pattern changes, depending on the length of the line.

GDI+ routines are used to create lines that use built-in line types, whereas Visio code is used to process custom line types. Visio works in this manner by design.