This is a good question, and the answer isn’t super-simple, but perhaps I’ll give you a few clues and hopefully not sound too obscure.

The idea with title blocks and borders is that they are not part of the scaled world. I usually put them on a background page that is not scaled, for simplicity.

If you have a title block on a scaled page, though, then the concept is that the title block should be, say 3in x 5in in PRINTED size, no matter the scale of the drawing. You are seeing this happen with the border you are using.

So let’s say we want our title block to print out at 3 x 5, regardless of scale. We can make this happen by using the ShapeSheet and entering the formulas for Width and Height as so:

Width = GUARD( ThePage!DrawingScale/ThePage!PageScale * 5in )
Height = GUARD( ThePage!DrawingScale/ThePage!PageScale * 3in )

This causes your title block to get bigger or shrink in response to scale changes (ie: it needs to be 50 ft long to print at 5in in a 1:10 scale, etc.)

The GUARD will prevent you from manually resizing the shape, so the “3 x 5″ should be changed to match the real size of your title block.

To control location, you can use this anti-scaling formula for PinX and PinY as well.

I usually create a user-defined cell to hold this expression so that I can re-use it:

User.AntiScale = ThePage!DrawingScale/ThePage!PageScale

and then we simplify our other expressions to:

Width = GUARD( User.AntiScale * 5in )
Height = GUARD( User.AntiScale * 3in )

Hope this sheds a bit of light on the mystery!

Occasionally I need to change the drawing scale so that whatever I’m working on fits on the paper size I am using. When I change the drawing scale say from 3/8″ = 1′ to 1/4″ = 1′, the title block “border” stays the same but the title block itself adjusts with the drawing scale. I have to ungroup my title block stencil, manually resize the “title block” portion and then regroup.

How can I set the title block so that it “acts” the same as the border when I change the drawing scale?

Thank you,

So you want to make one big title block with lots of different fields, it sounds like.

Unfortunately it isn’t super-easy, but here’s a rough outline of what to do:

1. Arrange a bunch of title blocks as desired
2. Group them together
3. Add Shape Data fields to the group for each title block sub-shape
4. Set these data fields to “ask on drop”
5. Insert text fields for each sub-shape/title-block element

When you drop or copy the grouped shape, Visio will prompt you to fill in the Shape Data fields.

Step #5 is perhaps the most complicated part, which I need to address with an article one of these days.