Code

Path Analysis in Visio

April 8, 2009 By Visio Guy 11 Comments

If you’re trying to take Visio to the next level by writing code for custom solutions, then you’ve likely run into some aspect of connections.

The well-commented VBA code (provided by guest-poster Al Edlund) which accompanies this article will help you make programmatic sense of the elemental stuff of connected Visio diagrams: connectors, connection points, OneD shapes, Connect and FromConnect.

You’ll also see how to produce connected diagrams, find out which shape is connected to which, and more importantly, do some path analysis to find the deeper meaning behind it all!

Trilogy-meter Data Graphics Part III

February 25, 2009 By Visio Guy 5 Comments

trilogy-meter-part-iii

Today, we continue with the movie-trilogy theme, but concentrate on advanced tips for importing and working with multiple shapes automatically.

This is the third and final piece in our trilogy of articles on Visio data graphics and data-linking.

Save Time & Simplify Your VBA Code With CallByName

June 23, 2008 By Visio Guy 14 Comments

VBA in Visio is great for learning, prototyping and getting repetitive tasks done quickly. One problem I run into–when I’m not careful—is bloated code resulting from the copying and pasting of too many loops. But with the CallByName function in VBA, we can streamline our code! [Read more…] about Save Time & Simplify Your VBA Code With CallByName

European Cup 2008 Auto-Updating Visio Diagram (v2)

June 21, 2008 By Visio Guy 2 Comments

UPDATE!

Hey football/soccer fans! We’ve got an update to our automated smart drawing for this years European Cup soccer tournament.

Perhaps you are familiar with the first version, which can be found here: European Cup 2008 Auto-Updating Diagram

Well, that version needed a few updates, most notably, the handling of games that are resolved with penalty-kicks, or shoot-outs.

European Cup 2008 Auto-Updating Visio Diagram

June 9, 2008 By Visio Guy 22 Comments

Visio is a natural choice for creating brackets for sports tournaments.

I have seen many elimination-tournament diagrams created in Visio over the years. In fact, just a few years ago, a very nice example was done for the 2006 World Cup. You can get it at Office Online here: 2006 World Cup Bracket.

But the trouble with these diagrams is that they require *gasp* manual input of data, or user-movement of shapes. The horror!

Well this year, that is all going to change…

Understanding Arc-Resize Problems in Visio

April 28, 2008 By Visio Guy 9 Comments

If you’ve ever drawn arcs in Visio, then grouped them together with other shapes, you may have noticed that they behave rather oddly on resizing. As you make the group bigger or smaller, the arcs may bow or squish in ways that you didn’t expect.

This problem arises because of the interaction style of the arc shapes, which is 1D. Visio has two interaction styles: 1D and 2D. They have to do with the green handles you see on the shape, and how you go about manipulating the shape with the mouse.

In this article, we’ll describe the difference between the two interaction styles, and explain how to correct resizing problems you might be encountering.

How Big Is My Shape?

April 13, 2008 By Visio Guy 17 Comments

Whether you’re a Visio end-user creating measured drawings, or you’re developing a Visio solution with customized Visio shapes, at some point, you’ll want to know how big your shapes are, and how to precisely resize them.

There are several ways to do this, and many of them allow you to edit the data as well. Today’s post offers a run-down of the many ways that you can edit and view the size of your Visio shapes!

[Read more…] about How Big Is My Shape?

Smart LineWeight: Bigger Shape, Thicker Lines

March 29, 2008 By Visio Guy 12 Comments

Recently we were introduced to the Cisco IP Telephone Shapes, and learned how they could be improved in the article: Making Shapes More Efficient: Using Fewer Shapes & Groups.

Today we’re going to focus on what happens when the Cisco shapes get resized, and discuss a technique for making the lineweight proportional to the size of the shape.

Making Shapes More Efficient: Using Fewer Shapes & Groups

March 28, 2008 By Visio Guy 4 Comments

You may have read our recent post on Cisco IP Telephone Shapes, and perhaps downloaded the shapes. While give-aways and freebies are nice, we at Visio Guy like to go further. We like look behind-the-scenes and talk about Visio development-related issues in order to give our readers a deeper understanding.

Before we released the Cisco IP Telephone shapes, we performed a number of tweaks to make them more efficient and better behaved. This article discusses a few of those operations–the whys and hows of making your shapes more efficient, and some tricks for ensuring proper resize behavior!

Connect All Shapes to Each Other

March 17, 2008 By Visio Guy 22 Comments

If you’re a developer, looking to create Visio-based solutions, then you’re going to need to programmatically connect Visio shapes together. Wouldn’t be nice to have a snippet or two to start from?

Today’s post shows you VB and C# code that instructs Visio to connect every shape to every other shape, and to create a beautiful mess, like that shown in the image at left.