Shape Design

Published on April 20, 2008 by David Parker

Setting Visio Shape Cell Values By Connections

A recent newsgroup poster asked me to explain how to set the line color and weight of a connector according to the shapes it is connected to. So, in this article, I have tried to explain one method of achieving this with minimal external coding.

In this example, I have created a rectangle shape that has a single Shape Data row, MyData, which has a fixed list of values, A;B;C.

The connector shape has been modified to trigger an event whenever a connection is made or unmade. If the user successfully connects two rectangles with the same MyData value, then the line (weight and color) of the connector shape is amended to match the rectangle shapes.

Published on April 4, 2008 by David Parker

UK Counties and Boroughs Map Shapes for Visio

My friend and colleague, Chris Roth, has made lots of maps available in Visio, his latest being Germany ( http://www.visguy.com/2008/03/01/map-of-germany/ ). Well, we Brits hate being outdone by a German-American, so I have decided to make my UK Map shapes for Visio publicly available at UK Geography Structure.vsd .

I created the UK map several years ago by converting from PDF to SVG to Visio, and each of the counties and boroughs have a single rectangular Master, Admin Area. I used code to replace the rectangle geometry with the actual shape geometry. This means that, although they are all different, they have the same Master, thus making it easier to propagate any changes, such as Shape Data rows.

[Read more…]

Published on March 17, 2008 by David Parker

Using Fill Patterns with DataGraphic Color By Value

Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Professional provides the ability to color shapes by different values in selected cells. This is great, but just how many color variations can your eyes detect? If you have lots of different values, then the color by value automatically produced colors can look too similar to be able to distinguish them apart. In this article, I propose a method of automatically assigning different fill patterns to similar colors so that they can be visually separated.
[Read more…] about Using Fill Patterns with DataGraphic Color By Value

Published on December 10, 2007 by David Parker

Creating PolyLines From Existing Shapes in Visio

A couple of posts in the Visio newsgroups got me thinking this weekend. One was from an Autocad conversant user who would prefer Visio to draw a continuous line between points rather than doing the normal click, hold and drag with line tool because he has tendonitis; and the other wanted to draw a circle centered on a vertex because he is drawing land boundaries.

Visio has a PolyLine line type, but, as far as I am aware, it can only be created in code – there is no menu or toolbar button to enable you to use it. It was introduced for converting CAD lines, and is simply a series of X and Y co-ordinates in a single cell, rather than the normal co-ordinate per row.
[Read more…] about Creating PolyLines From Existing Shapes in Visio

Published on November 15, 2007 by David Parker

Importing Hyperlinks into Visio Shapes

Visio shapes can have multiple hyperlinks, but it can be a chore to add them with the Insert / Hyperlinks … command. Fortunately, Visio 2007 Professional has the Data / Link Data to Shapes … command.

If you were to have a data source, such as an Excel spreadsheet, that contains hyperlinks (see the example below)…

Published on November 11, 2007 by David Parker

Finding a Row in a Visio DataRecordset

A recent newsgroup post asked how to find a row in a Visio DataRecordset for a given criteria. Well, I have used the IT Asset Management sample in Visio 2007 Professional to demonstrate how this can be done with a VBA function.

Of course, you may wish to improve the user interface because I limited myself to using an InputBox, and I have assumed that there is only one column defining the primary key of the DataRecordset.

The sub function, FindRow, listed below first checks whether the External Data window is open, and then gets the active DataRecordset. The code then reads the columns of the DataRecordset and prompts for a selection of the number of the column that you wish to search for a value in.