Size & Position

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.

Image of Visio Guy with snow on head Well folks, it’s snowing here at Visio Guy Headquarters in Munich! So I guess it’s time to start thinking winter after all. And that’s just what this article and download are all about: Winter! Visio and Winter! Visio and Winter and Snowflakes!

So let’s forget about BPM, Org Charts and Network Diagrams for a while, and hark back to the winters of our youth, when we’d busily be folding paper and cutting away triangular bits, in the mad pursuit to decorate our windows with paper snowflakes.

I’ve coddled together a little tutorial that shows you how to use Visio’s Fragment, Union, Combine and Trim functions to create snowflakes — “ just like you did back in kindergarten! And the download contains some Visual Basic for Applications code to help you “do the unfolding” automatically!

Understanding Arc-Resize Problems in Visio

Visio Snowflake Generator