If you copy formulas from this site that have quotes, they might be the fancy 66 99 quotes. Visio’s ShapeSheet only accepts the straight quotes (”), so you might have to retype them. I’ve turned off the fancy quotes in the blog software several times, but they just keep coming back.

Shapes that show page scale use ShapeSheet formulas that don’t update on foreground pages when placed on backgrounds, so you’ll have to put scale-reporting shapes on each page, unfortunately.

First, the quoted text will not work.

Secondly (most importantly), the scale does not update from page to page. It works on the Background page, but all the pages of different scales will not update – it shows the scale established on the Background page. It this the way it is supposed to work?

This is the last feature that I desperately need to get working for our company standard templates.

You can get a shape object, then get the text via shp.Text.

To get a special shape on a page, you could name each shape. See: What’s My Shape’s ID? for more info on shape ids and names.

So if you have a “title shape” on each page, you could give each one the name “MyTitle”.

Then you can get each title shape using pg.Shapes.Item( “MyTitle” ).

One thing I am stuck on though (and title blocks may not be a solution) is how to roll information forward into a table of contents for a set of tabs/sheets. In particular, I have
1. the page name (from the tab name) which in my data is a numeric value
2. a the page number from the Visio field for page number.
3. text descriptive title from each page (actually on-page text)

1 & 2 pull nicely into a TOC macro (by Stephen Turbeck & greenonions.com). What I can’t figure out how to do is get #3 a into the TOC. Any help would be appreciated.

I have in the past combined numeric value and text name in the tab, but that makes the tabs very wide and more unwieldy to navigate in document with many sheets.

Thanks, Lynn

It’s not straightforward to calculate the page scale ratios. You have to refer to two ShapeSheet cells in the page’s ShapeSheet:

- ThePage!PageScale
- ThePage!DrawingScale

So, for example to get something that looks like 1:4, you could do this in the Custom Formula field of the Insert Field dialog:

= 1 & “:” & ThePage!DrawingScale/ThePage!PageScale

To get it in “inches=feet” format, then something like this:

= ( 0in + ThePage!PageScale )/1in & “”" = ” & ThePage!DrawingScale/12in & “‘”

I started using this to modify my title blocks, but have run into one problem. How can I get the scale of the page (i.e. 3″ = 1′)? I don’t see a scale option in the fields list.

Of course this assumes that the file was saved with title information entered. Note, it only needs to be entered once, and placed on the background page.

Keep up the great work

I usually write these late at night!

I’ve changed the article to list DOCLASTEDIT() as the ShapeSheet function that gets inserted for “Last Edit Date/Time”.

And thanks for pointing out the difference between the DOCLASTEDIT() and DOCLASTSAVE() functions. Hopefully folks will have a better understanding of how to go into the ShapeSheet and make a “last save” SmartShape!

Great ideas. One question though: isn’t the formula inserted for Last Edit
DOCLASTEDIT()
and not
DOCLASTSAVE()
as you indicate above?

DOCLASTSAVE() is actually more useful in many cases [DOCLASTEDIT()changes every time you do anything in the drawing; DOCLASTSAVE()only updates when you save]. However, Last Save Date isn’t on the Insert/Field menu — you have to know to enter the formula manually in the shape sheet, or choose Last Edit Date and then edit the formula.

Scott

cheers Tony

cheers Tony

I always thought that a title block should stay roughly the same size, the idea being that on a bigger drawing there is more space for more drawing details, and the title block takes up proportionally less of the paper.

Ie: the text on the title block is always 12pt, no matter the paper size, so to speak. Does that make sense? Is it flat out wrong?

The trick is making shapes that do both. Sometimes people want the text to stretch with the shape, other times they don’t. It’s hard to know which one folks will want on any given day.

- Chris