A recent Visio newsgroup post asked about customizing the output files from Visio’s Save As Web feature. This rang a bell in the ol’ noggin, and I went searching for an old demo that exported a customized html page, with pop-up menus that displayed Custom Property (Shape Data) information.
Development
Resize Text With Metafiles!
A common question from budding Visio SmartShape developers is: “How do I get my text to resize with the shape?” Well, there are a few typical responses to that question, but this article focuses on a very simple method that you can use for text that does not change. So if you’re building shapes with company logos, digital readouts, or something similar, then read on!
Text Resizing with ShapeSheet Formulas
We see quite often in Visio’s newsgroups the question; “how do I get my font size to change with the size of my shape?” We’ll tackle that issue with some nifty ShapeSheet formulas, and a bit of philosophizing. So pull up a chair and a warm cup of coffee…
Forefront Icons and Data Graphic Shapes
If you are using Microsoft Forefront Client Security, and are documenting it in your Visio network diagrams, or if you dig Visio’s new Data Graphics features, or simply like brightly-colored, shiny new Visio shapes and then we’ve got an article and a download for you!
Masking Images in Visio
Sure you can import bitmaps and images for use as Visio shapes. But imports are always rectangular, and they can have unappealing or distracting backgrounds that you’d rather not look at. While Visio doesn’t have a masking capability or an irregular-cropping feature, there is a technique that will allow you to get the same effect!
Book Review: Visualizing Information with Microsoft Office Visio 2007
Whether you are a developer creating a Visio-based solution, or are a competent Visio user, David Parker’s excellent offering will help you push Visio 2007 to new limits!
[Read more…] about Book Review: Visualizing Information with Microsoft Office Visio 2007
Month Math
An associate asked me the other day; “how do you add a number of months to a date?”
I thought this would be simple, because the ShapeSheet supports elapsed-time units in addition to date and time formats.
With elapsed-time, you can manipulate quantities of time, so the problem seemed fairly easy.
Well, not exactly… [Read more…] about Month Math
When 2D Glue Breaks
If you’ve used Visio’s 2D glue capabilities, you’ll know it’s pretty neat. Not only can you glue shapes to one-another, but you can get them to snap to a direction as well! However, if you’ve tried to heavily exploit this feature, you might have run into some problems.
Sales Force Automation With Visio
One of the areas in which Visio particularly shines is that of Sales Force Automation. With Visio, a rep can sit on-site with a customer, and visually spec out a system or an installation. The components in the Visio schematic can be linked to real product-data, and can be analyzed via code to generate bills-of-material and reports automatically.
On MSDN, I recently uncovered “oldie but goody” demo that shows off these capabilities. I created it for Visio 5.0, while I still worked for Visio Corp, and it still works with Visio 2003! The demo illustrates how a fictitious candy-manufacturing line might be laid out. Custom shapes represent general classes of equipment, and database links behind the shapes specify real-world items. With the click of a button, a Bill of Materials, is generated in an embedded Excel spreadsheet, sitting right on the page!
Run VBA Code When Documents Open
If you’ve dabbled with the VBA project that resides in Visio documents, then you’ve likely stumbled upon the Document object’s DocumentOpened event. This is a great place for running any initialization code that you might require, but there’s a better way…