I have been creating Microsoft Visio solutions for 30 years now … my first was in 1996! I have been an advocate for custom Masters from the very start, every since I learnt how editing the Master can automatically update all of its instance shapes can be automatically updated throughout the document. Whenever you drag and drop a Master from a Stencil into a document for the first time, it copies that Master to the Document Stencil, and from then on it will use the local Master in the Document Stencil to create new shape instances that reference the local Master. If you need to customise the local Master, then you should ensure that the Match master by name on drop is checked. All of the provided stencils contain Masters where this property is not checked. The main exception to this is the Dynamic connector Master. Not only is this Master provided with this property checked, it is also automatically created when you do certain actions. This article explains when this is done in the UI and in code.
The above screenshots show that using the Tools menu will only add shapes that do not have a Master. Notice how the Rectangle and Ellipse command add shapes to the Drawing Explorer with names Sheet.xx. Similarly, the Line tool adds a Sheet.xx shape, but does not connect glue, by default, to either shape.
The best way to connect two shapes is to use the Connector tool, which does not only glue dynamically to both shapes, but automatically adds the Dynamic connector to the local Document Stencil, and creates a instance shape of it. In the next screenshots, I have undone the Line shape….
So, the Dynamic connector Master now exists in the Document Stencil and can be customised, and will already have the Match master by name on drop property checked.
For developers, the Dynamic connector Master can be created using the Shape.AutoConnect(…) method. This has arguments for the placement direction, and an optional third argument for an alternative Master to use. If this last argument is not present, then the Dynamic connector is created, if necessary.
If the placement direction is anything but visAutoConnectDirNone, then the spacing option is applied when the shapes are connected.
So, the Dynamic connector Master can be used via automation, even if it does not already exist. However, many of the Microsoft supplied templates are supplied with customised versions of the Dynamic connector already.
By the way, the only other Master that gets automatically created if it doesn’t exist is the Rectangle one used by Data Visualiser that is created when manually creating data-linked shapes without selecting a suitable Master .
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