Another newsgroup question has asked about automating the update of shape area and perimeter lengths. Now, this is an area (no pun intended) that I am most interested in because I used to do a lot of space planning. Visio Professional does include Space and Boundary shapes on the Resources stencil that use an add-in to update the area, but does nothing about the perimeter length. These shapes do highlight some of the issues to be considered though…
- Visio pages can be scaled, and indeed the various floor plan and site layout templates in Visio are pre-scaled. Most templates are not scaled, and therefore default to 1:1 scale.
- Visio measures everything internally in inches, although you can display in almost whatever units you choose.
- The Visio Application object has a handy ConvertResult (StringOrNumber, UnitsIn, UnitsOut) method, which can be used for linear and area measurements … and can also be used for date and times.
- Visio can store decimal numbers to a very high degree of precision (I counted 14 decimal places), but you almost always want to format the display.
- Visio can call a method in a VBA project when the values in specified cells are changed.
- It is easy to display Shape Data in a shape, either by using Data Graphics or by Insert Field
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