bVisual

Shape Design

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Smart Radio Buttons and Check Boxes in Visio

A recent project requires an interactive tutorial within Microsoft Visio desktop where a lot of the questions need a single answer using radio buttons, or multiple-choice answers using check boxes. I thought that this would be a great use of the list containers capability because the questions and answers could be part of the container shape whilst the individual questions are presented as items in the list and automatically inheriting their particular question text from the containing list shape. So, this article provides these smart master shapes, and explains how they are built.

  • In Tutor mode, the Questions, Answers, Explanation and More Info can be edited
  • In normal mode, the Questions are presented unmarked and without explanation
  • Incorrect answers are marked with a red cross. An explanation and optional more info hyperlink is available
  • Correct answers are marked with a green tick. An explanation and optional more info hyperlink is available.
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Using Button Face Ids in Visio

Microsoft Visio desktop has the ability to display icons from a built-in list of Office icons on Actions and Action Tags (nee Smart Tags). These can be set in the ShapeSheet by using the desired number from several thousand in the ButtonFace cell. Although there is the ability to add better icons using code, the quick ShapeSheet formulas are useful way of indicating the purpose of a command. This article simply lists the first 3,600 of these fas a quick and easy reference for me, and othe ShapeSheet disigners out there!

  • Face Ids from 0001 to 0360
  • Face Ids from 0361 to 0720
  • Face Ids from 0721 to 1400
  • Face Ids from 1441 to 1800
  • Face Ids from 1801 to 2160
  • FaceI ds from 2161 to 2520
  • Face Ids from 2521 to 2880
  • Face Ids from 2881 to 3240
  • Face Ids from 3241 to 3600
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Grid Snapping Revisited

I have previously tackled the subject of snapping to grids in Visio desktop (see https://bvisual.net/2018/06/19/really-snapping-to-grids-in-visio/ ) but a recent project required me to improve the example because it did not respond to all cursor arrow keys. The problem was that the previous solution could not understand which arrow key had been clicked, therefore it did not know if to reposition to the previous or next grid. The new ShapeSheet code solution can now respond to the correct arrow key … and all without any add-in. In addition, I also show how a Control point can be made to snap to a grid spacing, and how AutoConnect can be set to add the next shape at the right offset in both the horizontal and vertical directions.

Lastly, Microsoft released the web edition of Visio since the last article, and I demonstrate the difference behaviour of grid snapping between that and the desktop edition.

  • Set the Horizontal and Vertical Grid Spacing
  • Turn OFF Snap to Ruler subdivisions and Grid ON
  • Edit Space between Shapes for AutoConnect
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The importance of #layers in Visio for Power BI

Judging by the number of downloads of my free Visio and Power BI GuIde, there is an increasing recognition of this great feature. I recently started to prepare an example for someone, but found that their sample Visio document has just over the 1,000 shape limit, so what can you do about that? The answer is to modify the master shapes so only the top level of the group has a # symbol at the start. This ensures that only the shapes on these layers are counted. In this particular example the count of shapes was reduced from 1,084 to 278 … well within the limit!

So, how is this done? Well, this can be done manually by editing each master shape. In this following example the shape count is reduced from 6 to 1 using this method, and there are 45 instances of this master shape on the page. so that makes 45*5=225 less shapes just by editing this one master.

  • Master structure before any changes to the layers
  • Master structure with # layer for the top level group
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Setting Default Measurement Units in Visio Pages

Microsoft Visio can handle many different units of measurements which can be set for a page and separately for shapes, such as dimensions, within the page. This can confuse some users who expect them both to be the same all the time. In fact, the dimension units can be set to be the same as the page units, but not necessarily so. It is possible to have different units on different dimension shapes, but is also possible to set all the same with one click, and to synchronise them with the page units.

  • Page Units
  • Dimension Units
  • Page Scale
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Linking Data to Shapes in Visio after using Data Visualizer

Data Visualizer (DV) in Visio Plan 2 (Data | Create from Data | Create ) is great because it provides a way of automatically creating a diagram from data, but it also prevents some of the other data-linking features in Visio from being used. This is because DV wants to take control of the data in the shapes to provide refreshes from the data source or send updates to the data source. This can be very annoying if you use DV to create the initial layout, then you enhance this, so it looks just perfect, and then you just want to update some of the data without affecting the layout. DV may re-layout your carefully crafted diagram, even if there are no updates to the data that should do that. Also, you may want to integrate data from other sources that were not available or accessible to the table or query used for by Data Visualizer. This is when you may want to use Data | External Data | Custom Import which also provides a much greater number of data source types. In this article, you will learn how you can do this manually, or automate it with the help of a little VBA code (or similar).

In this example, I have used table of personnel that I have used before, but added an extra column, Shape Type, that simply has the value Rectangle, which is simply the name of a simple Master shape that I have added to my macro-enabled stencil, ExDataLinker.vssm.

  • tblOrgData for the structure
  • DV Step 1
  • DV Step 2
  • DV Step 3
  • DV Step 4
  • DV Basic Layout
  • DV Re-layed out with Data Graphics
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