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Shape Design

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Visio 2010 Developer References

By now, some of you will have downloaded the Visio 2010 Beta, and may even have downloaded the Visio Automation Reference and ShapeSheet Reference files. You may the, like me, wondered how to actually view the contents of these two hxs files?  Well, fortunately, Stephanie Horn from the Visio team at Microsoft as able to help, so I thought that I would pass it on to you.  (Remember these files are still beta, but they do contain some useful information).

Once you download and unpack the files, you will end up with two files called Visio2010AutoRef.hxs and Visio2010ShapeSheetRef.hxs. You can view them with any HxS viewer, but the download site suggests replacing the existing versions of these files and viewing them through Visio help. To do this:

1. Rename the files VISIO.DEV.HXS and VISIO.SHAPESHEET.HXS, respectively, and put them in your Office141033 directory (i.e., C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice141033).

2. Open Visio, and launched help (F1).

3. Pick “Developer Reference” or “Visio ShapeSheet Help” in the Search pull-down menu.

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I suggest turning on “Show Table of Contents” using the book icon in the toolbar, so you can navigate through the help topics.

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Visio 2010 Validation Rules (part 2)

In my previous post, I began to explore the new Validation objects in the Visio 2010 Technical Preview, an I used some VBA code to do this.  Well, I have now uploaded the code to OneDrive ( bVisualValidationExplorer.vss ), so that you can use it too!  So, this post is about using this code …

First, download the stencil and save it to you My Shapes folder (if you trust me).  This will make it available to you to use in any Visio 2010 document.

Then, whenever you want to use the code, simply open the stencil from the More Shapes / My Shapes category….

imageThe stencil will be docked with the other shape stencils, but, of course, this stencil does not have any shapes … only VBA code.

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Visio 2010 Validation Rules (part 1)

The Microsoft Visio team recently blogged about Creating custom validation rules for Visio 2010 , in which it was suggested that we can use Visual Basic for Applications to interact with the new validation API.  I thought, there’s a challenge … so I will develop a VBA project to do just that.  I will upload the code soon, but, as it is only half developed today, I will demonstrate how to understand why a rule has been broken.

In the following BPMN diagram, I have failed to connect a Task to the End Event.  I have made it obvious here but it could be easy to overlook in a larger diagram.  In fact, I know of one company who were advised by a “consultant” that there must be something wrong when the end of a connector goes red therefore you should move it away from the shape until it goes green!  The result was that the company had over 300 flow diagrams without a single valid connection!  That company is no more!

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Listing Connections in Visio 2010

One of the best bits of Visio is the connections between shapes, but it has always been difficult to understand these connections in code.  There are connections to and from shapes, which require you to understand where you are and which way to look … at the beginning or the end of a 1D connector. Visio 2010 has added some useful extra methods to the shape object which makes understanding connections much easier.  This post will show you how you can use the new GluedShapes() and ConnectedShapes() methods.

Take, for example, a network diagram where there are connections between servers and routers:

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You may wish to list the connections at the start and end of each cable.  Previously, this would have meant inspecting the connected cell to see if was at the beginning or end of the line, but now you can use the GluedShapes() method of a shape to retrieve an array of the 2D shapes connected at one end or another with the relevant arguments, visGluedShapesIncoming2D or visGluedShapesOutgoing2D.  The ListGluedConnections macro below displays the following in the immediate window:

Connector     Dynamic connector
>             Router.45     router-02
<             Server        server-01 Connector     Dynamic connector.107 >             Router.45     router-02
<             Server.30     server-02 Connector     Dynamic connector.108 >             Router        router-01
<             Server.75     server-03 Connector     Dynamic connector.109 >             Router.91     router-03
<             Server.30     server-02 Connector     Dynamic connector.110 >             Router.91     router-03
<             Server        server-01
Public Sub ListGluedConnections()
Dim shp As Visio.Shape
Dim connectorShape As Visio.Shape
Dim sourceShape As Visio.Shape
Dim targetShape As Visio.Shape
Dim aryTargetIDs() As Long
Dim arySourceIDs() As Long
Dim targetID As Long
Dim sourceID As Long
Dim i As Integer

For Each shp In Visio.ActivePage.Shapes
    If shp.OneD Then
        Debug.Print "Connector", shp.Name
        arySourceIDs = shp.GluedShapes(visGluedShapesIncoming2D, "")
        For i = 0 To UBound(arySourceIDs)
            Set sourceShape = Visio.ActivePage.Shapes.ItemFromID(arySourceIDs(i))
            If sourceShape.CellExists("Prop.NetworkName", Visio.visExistsAnywhere) Then
                Debug.Print , ">", sourceShape.Name, sourceShape.Cells("Prop.NetworkName").ResultStr("")
            End If
        Next
        aryTargetIDs = shp.GluedShapes(visGluedShapesOutgoing2D, "")
        For i = 0 To UBound(aryTargetIDs)
            Set targetShape = Visio.ActivePage.Shapes.ItemFromID(aryTargetIDs(i))
            If targetShape.CellExists("Prop.NetworkName", Visio.visExistsAnywhere) Then
                Debug.Print , "<", targetShape.Name, targetShape.Cells("Prop.NetworkName").ResultStr("")
            End If
        Next
    End If
Next

End Sub

Similarly, you may want to simply list the next connected 2D shape, effectively ignoring the cable.  In this case, you can use the new ConnectedShapes() method, with the relevant arguments visGluedShapesIncoming2D or visGluedShapesOutgoing2D, to produce an output like the following ( using the ListNextConnections macro below):

Shape         Server        server-01
>             Router.45     router-02
>             Router.91     router-03
Shape         Router        router-01
<             Server.75     server-03 Shape         Server.30     server-02 >             Router.45     router-02
>             Router.91     router-03
Shape         Router.45     router-02
<             Server        server-01
<             Server.30     server-02 Shape         Server.75     server-03 >             Router        router-01
Shape         Router.91     router-03
<             Server        server-01
<             Server.30     server-02
Public Sub ListNextConnections()
Dim shp As Visio.Shape
Dim connectorShape As Visio.Shape
Dim sourceShape As Visio.Shape
Dim targetShape As Visio.Shape
Dim aryTargetIDs() As Long
Dim arySourceIDs() As Long
Dim targetID As Long
Dim sourceID As Long
Dim i As Integer

For Each shp In Visio.ActivePage.Shapes
    If Not shp.OneD Then
        If shp.CellExists("Prop.NetworkName", Visio.visExistsAnywhere) Then
            Debug.Print "Shape", shp.Name, shp.Cells("Prop.NetworkName").ResultStr("")
            arySourceIDs = shp.ConnectedShapes(visConnectedShapesOutgoingNodes, "")
            For i = 0 To UBound(arySourceIDs)
                Set sourceShape = Visio.ActivePage.Shapes.ItemFromID(arySourceIDs(i))
                If sourceShape.CellExists("Prop.NetworkName", Visio.visExistsAnywhere) Then
                    Debug.Print , "<", sourceShape.Name, sourceShape.Cells("Prop.NetworkName").ResultStr("") End If Next aryTargetIDs = shp.ConnectedShapes(visConnectedShapesIncomingNodes, "") For i = 0 To UBound(aryTargetIDs) Set targetShape = Visio.ActivePage.Shapes.ItemFromID(aryTargetIDs(i)) If targetShape.CellExists("Prop.NetworkName", Visio.visExistsAnywhere) Then Debug.Print , ">", targetShape.Name, targetShape.Cells("Prop.NetworkName").ResultStr("")
                End If
            Next
        End If
    End If
Next

End Sub

I think this makes interrogation of connected diagrams, of all flavours, much simpler, though I would love to have similar ShapeSheet functions too!

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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.

image

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Introducing celMaker 2

I was recently asked to provide a  new version of celMaker that works with Visio 2007 and Excel 2007, so I got my old VB6 code out of SourceSafe and upgraded it so that I could run it on my Vista 64 laptop too.  I also decided that I would release this version to the public as freeware because I have added no new features.So, what is celMaker? And where can you download it?

Last one first … you can download it from here : http://www.bvisual.net/products/celMaker/publish.htm (under review)

Most Visio users will have the components, so you can just click the Launch link.

1. Introduction

celMaker is a developer(ish) tool for Visio which allows the most often used sections of a Visio ShapeSheet to be copied into an Excel spreadsheet, or from an Excel spreadsheet onto a Visio master.
This means that the Visio Shape designer can create one master with its Shape Data (nee Custom  Properties), User Cells, Actions, Smart Tags, Controls and Connection Points, and then save this to an Excel spreadsheet for backup, verification, discussions, documentation or transfer to another Master.
The Excel spreadsheet can be created manually or by reverse engineering existing Visio masters.
celMaker is provided as a stand alone executable that requires both Visio and Excel to be running, and can be used for many different types of diagram projects.

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