Here’s a rough snippet of how you change the height of a Visio shape, in C#:

// visApp is a Visio Application object

// Get a selected shape:
Vis.Shape shp = visApp.ActiveWindow.Selection[1];

// Set the value of the height cell in inches:
shp.Cells["Height"].ResultIU = 3.5; // ie: “2U”

Hope that gets you started.

I’m not really sure what is happening, but I did find an article that deals with a similar topic:

An error (1415) occurred during the action Open Object
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/829776/en-us

This relates to Visio 2003 and Excel, but perhaps it will give you some clues.

Here’s more detailed info from Visio Expert JuneTheSecond:

http://www.office-forums.com/error-1415-occurred-during-action-open-object-t1618867.html

That is probably a specific feature to the Brainstorming solution in Visio. The Brainstorming stuff involves a template, a stencil (set of shapes) and an add-in that assists specifically with brainstorming diagramming tasks.

Many Visio discipline-specific templates use add-ins to enhance the user experience. As a result, you get different functionality showing up from drawing type to drawing type.

For Brainstorming, an outline-export makes sense. For random Visio drawings, it makes less sense. What would “export to Word” mean for an office plan, or a network rack diagram? Either nothing, or something different in each case.

Cheers,

Chris

1. Step 1
1.1 step 1 to accomplish step 1
1.2 you get the point
2. Step 2

Also i keep hearing about a developer tool in 2007 Visio (not the developer tab for 2010) so I can add check boxes, I already accessed the “run in developer mode from options but cant find the menu.

Thanks

I have a visio diagram that starts with a company’s budget and then flows to different boxes based on a formula. I have embedded the excel spreadsheet so I can quickly see what happens if the budget is increased or I change the formula some other way. But I currently have to redo the chart by manually entering the numbers that excel generates. Is there a way that each box could be linked to it’s correct excel cell?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I got tired of hand-coding my DDL from Visio 2007 Diagrams, so I wrote a script to do it for me. I know it’s not perfect. But, it works for me. You are welcome to try it out at aboutwhatever.net/posts/visio-2007-database-model-ddl-generation. If there is enough interest, I will look into expanding it’s capabilities.

SELECT Server, MakeModel, StartingU from ServerTable where CabinetName = [typed value from LinkedCabinet] AND
Location = [typed value from LinkedCabinet]

Each MakeModel would tie to a Visio standard graphic — like an HP DL380 Server or Cisco Router, and the StartingU and total height in U is known.

Let’s say the query returned 5 servers:
StartingU MakeModel ServerName
33 HP DL380 Server1
25 IBM 3850 Server2
20 IBM 3850 Server3
12 CPQ DL360 Server4
1 IBM 5000 Server5

I want to automatically draw the server graphics at the proper StartingU based upon the results of the query. I would then continue to add cabinets as needed to reflect the population of cabinets in my data center. All devices inside those cabinets would be drawn automatically. Every time the drawing is refreshed, it would re-run the queries to update the cabinets based upon the results.

Have looked at various integration articles but haven’t found any that mention trying to do all of this. Is it possible?

Thanks,
Jon

I can’t think of anything to make the page transparent. Perhaps when you host the Visio Active X control in a Windows form, but I doubt it.

What problem are you really trying to solve? Visio supports putting shapes on layers, and background pages, as well as transparency on shapes and imported bitmaps and metafiles. Perhaps these features will help you to do what you want?

Cheers,

- Chris

Is it possible to make Visio page transparent using SDK? I did not find anything like that and wonder if it’s possible at all.

See ya,
Shamil

In Visio, a shape is located on the page by its “Pin”, which is also the rotation point. If you are scanning a document with, say VBA code, you can get the Pin locations like this:


Dim shp as Visio.Shape
For each shp in Visio.ActivePage
Debug.Print shp.CellsU(”PinX”).ResultIU
Debug.Print shp.CellsU(”PinY”).ResultIU
Next shp

ResultIU gives you the values in inches. You can also use .Result(”mm”) to get the results in millimeters. Just change the text in parentheses for different units, or use the Visio.visUnitCodes enumeration.

- Chris

any help would be greatly appreciated,

Chris

You’ll want to have a look at the Datebase Wizard under the Tools menu to link info in shapes with info in Excel. It’s not as easy as just referencing one cell to another, even though Visio’s ShapeSheet kind of looks like an Excel spreadsheet.

Also, in Visio 2007, the Data Graphics feature does some real neat stuff regarding shapes and external data.

I’d elaborate more, but I’m sitting in an old bus that is set up as an internet lounge on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand, and don’t have a whole bunch of time today

Cheers,

Chris