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Containers

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Update to multiSelect & tracing sub-shape connections in Visio

Most of my Visio diagrams have simple connections between shapes, and my previous post about connections used a flowchart as an example (see https://blog.bvisual.net/2016/08/09/understanding-visio-connections/ ). However, it has come to my attention that some Visio developers add connection points to sub-shapes of Visio group shapes, and then connect between the sub-shapes. This means that the code in my previous article would need to be adapted to cater for this scenario. It has also meant that I needed to update my free multiSelect Visio add-in needed an update. The updated version (1.0.6.0) is for Visio 2010+, and is available from http://bvisual.net/Products/multiSelect.aspx .

multiSelect Tracing connected sub-shapes
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Multiple Selection Methods for Visio Diagrams

Much as I love using Visio, I have always felt that there are a few selection methods missing, and I often have to some extra buttons into solutions to make up for this. There are many types of diagrams that have shapes connected to each other, usually with a connector shape, and the user needs to be able to traverse these connections quickly and easily, so I have created a Visio 2010 add-in, multiSelect, that adds a lot of different selection methods that are accessible via an extra ribbon tab when ever a shape is selected.

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Visio 2010 Container Problems

Update : I have received a corrected response from my friends at Microsoft regarding the use of Spatial Neighbors and Containers, so I have to revise this post from its original. The changes are marked in Red.

The Structured Diagramming API in Visio 2010 is really neat, but there are a couple of problems that I think you should be aware of. The first one is about how shapes can appear to be in a container, but aren’t really; and the second is how the Container type prevents SpatialNeighbors from working … unless you use a new constant.

Let’s start with an example diagram that contains three Process shapes on a Cross Functional Flowchart. Notice that I have select the Process shape labelled A and this has caused the swimlane Function 2 to display a brown highlight … this is a good indication that the Structured Diagramming

API is working, and that Function 2 is a container shape. I have placed two more Process shapes below the swimlanes, and one of them (C) is on top of a SubProcess shape.


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Writing rules to validate diagrams in Visio 2010 – A worked example

Microsoft Visio 2010 Premium Edition introduced an extension to the Visio Type Library called the Validation API. This provides the capability to validate a Visio diagram to ensure that its construction complies with industry-standard or company –wide rules.

Organizations are able to use this new feature to encapsulate business logic as validation rules, grouped within rule sets.

Microsoft Visio 2010 Premium edition contains rule sets for use with Basic and Cross-Functional Flowcharts, BPMN Diagrams and SharePoint Workflow Designer diagrams.

This article describes how you can create your own rule sets and rules.

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Visio 2010 : Containment and Cross-Functional Flowcharts

One of the templates to get a revision in Visio 2010 is the Cross Functional Flowchart template because of the new list and containment functionality that has been added into the core application.  I had to write a small bit of code in earlier versions of Visio for each flowchart shape to automatically understand which swimlane and phase it belongs to, but now there are ShapeSheet functions available, so a slight modification of a flowchart master enables it to inherit values from the swimlane that it is in.  This article demonstrates who you can do this to, for example, synchronize the fill color of each flowchart shape to that of the swimlane that it belongs to.

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