I was recently asked about switching between different Visio Data Graphics within a page, so I thought I should record a few short videos to explain how Visio Data Graphics work, how they can be edited and duplicated, and how to automate switching between them.
I wrote a post a few years ago entitled How to Run VBA Macros from a Ribbon Button in Visio 2010, and was recently asked how to add the custom buttons to an existing tab. Well, it got me thinking that I don’t really like having any VBA code in my Visio diagram documents, so I thought I would explain how all the code can be in a macro-enabled stencil so that it can be used with many different diagram documents. It turned out to be a very easy modification….
… that is the question!
I have known for some time that it is safer to copy and paste code from the web into Notepad or similar, before copying and pasting that into my own code. It is not only new line characters that can be different but also the double-quotes. I recently noticed this when I was writing my series on Visio ShapeSheet Functions A-Z because I make copious use of the EVALTEXT(…) function, so I investigated further and found that there are different double-quotes used when typing text into a Visio shape or typing into a Visio ShapeSheet cell!
Developing a Visio solution usually involves both .Net code and Visio ShapeSheet formulas. Good practice dictates that the source code is saved into a code repository, such as Git, where changes can be committed and commented. Visual Studio 2019 now includes native Git support, and can be linked to Azure DevOps easily. The code can be viewed by others and the changes made by commits can be reviewed. This is tried and tested for the .Net code, but any changes made to a Visio template, stencil or drawing document is a black box. If the Visio document is included in the Git project, then all that is visible is the fact that the file has been changed, but the detail of the actual changes are unknown. There may be some comments with the commit, but that is not a precise definition. So, what if there was a way to easily spot the changes?
Every Visio shape must have a unique name in the collection that it belongs to, and to ensure this, Visio automatically one using the master name or just “Sheet”, if not an instance of a master, followed by a period (“.”) and the ID. However, a user can rename a shape, and Visio will then also update the universal name (NameU) to be the same as the Name. If a user chooses to re-name a shape a second time, then thee universal name is not updated … it remains as the original name.
To demonstrate this I drew a rectangle, then named, and re-named it:
I have previously written about using off-page references and labelled page grids in Visio, see A Page Grid with Labels and Page Grids and Off Page References, however a reader pointed out that the label on the Off-Page Reference shape is duplicated on both ends. This is not always ideal, however it is all I could do using just ShapeSheet formulas alone. So, in this article, I show how a VBA macro can enhance the reciprocal labels on the twin Off-Page Reference shapes, and they automatically update if either end is moved between grids. This is especially useful in electrical wiring diagrams, but the principal can be adapted for other purposes.
