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  • Will that be Metric or Imperial?

    For a long time Visio has supported stencils and templates in two different measurement system; Imperial (US) and Metric. Each template had a US version and a Metric version. So why two templates? The US templates were in in, ft, yds and the other imperial...

  • Whose your father?

    Visio does provide an option for printing shapesheets but it is wordy. In the past I have used Excel to sort and manipulate the information, but this is time consuming and really does not give me everything I want. One thing that was not easy to do was...

  • Percentage Ruler

    When I try to create Visio shapes from a sample image, I import the image into Visio and stretch it so it matches the scale of the drawing. I can then use the dimension shapes to "measure" the image. Recently I came across a collection of shapes...
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  • Enhancing the Orgchart with different reporting lines

    Over the summer I was asked if it was possible to have some of the reporting lines a different pattern. An interesting idea, but how do you mantain the feature when the Orgchart is imported and exported? For this feature to work the information had to...

  • Visio's other file format - Report Definition files *.VRD

    It has been a long standing fact that though there were several Visio file tpes; stencils, drawing, templates and workspaces, there was a only one Visio file format. Several versions ago, a new file format crept into the Visio file format. Visio added...

  • How do Borders and Title shapes stretch to fit the page?

    When dropping a border or title shape on a page, it automatically stretches to fit the page, but if you look at the shapesheet for the dropped shape, Width and Height are fixed. How do they do that? The trick is that the shape on the stencil has an EventDrop...

  • The Bowness of a Circular Arc

    To create a circular arc in a shapesheet's Geometry section, requires the specification of where the arc ends and a cell called "A" that holds the measurement of how much the arc differs from a straight line between the end points of the arc. The deflection...

  • Creating Automation Friendly Visio diagrams

    About a week ago I was asked if it was possible to save the information from a hand drawing Orgchart (one done without the wizard). The simple answer was yes, but with a few caveats. It would not be an easy task to extract all the information from the...

  • Visio's Most Useful Tool - The Macro Recorder

    Finally, with the release of Visio 2003, came Visio's most useful tool for development; the macro recorder. By clicking the record button it is possible to quickly see how various Visio tasks can be translated into VBA. The Help file that comes with Visio...

  • Pop up text on a document saved as HTML

    Thanks to Visio's Mark Nelson for the following tip: You can add the User.visEquivTitle cell to your shape and provide a string hat will display as a tooltip in the web output. The shape must also have at least one custom property for the tooltip to be...

  • DistanceFrom Problem

    Last month, Tsung-Yuan Liu reported that he was getting inconsistent results with DistanceFrom. DistanceFrom A->B was not the same as DistanceFrom B->A. If you create two identical squares seperated by a gap, DistanceFrom A->B = DistanceFrom...

  • Comments?

    Visio 2003 supports two types of comments: Shape ScreenTips and Annotation. Shape ScreenTips is the older of the two and associates a comment with a shape that appears when you hover over a shape. The information about the comment is stored in the comment...

  • A Visio line pattern

    During my usual weekend hunt for Visio items on the net I came across an article by Dan Brown on how to create a simple custom line pattern that indicates direction. The line pattern tapers in the direction of travel. This is accomplished by choosing...

  • Custom line ends

    One interesting feature of Visio that is not well documented is that you can create your own custom fill patterns, line patterns and line ends. For now, I will review the procedure for creating a semicircular line end. Something like: (-----) 1) Open...

  • How do the background shapes work?

    When dropped on the current page the background shapes automatically adjust to the size of the current page. This is more obvious when the page has a landscape orientation. This same feature is also used in the border shapes. To make your own background...

  • Only one background page?

    In several online tutorials (non Microsoft), it is usually mentioned that you can only have one background page. This is partially true. A page can only have one background page. This is often interpreted as meaning only foreground pages, but background...

  • Headers/Footers or Background Pages?

    Anyone new to Visio may not be aware of why Visio has both Headers/Footers and background pages or know that there is such a thing as a background page. In Visio 1, the developers created the concept of type basic types of pages; foreground and background...

  • Document ShapeSheet: Where? What? Why?

    Note: This post is a lot funnier if you try to read it out loud! Visio solution developer's will be excited to learn that Visio has a Document ShapeSheet . This ShapeSheet looks similar to a page's ShapeSheet, which in turn is similar to any old shape...

  • Welcome

    The purpose of this blog is to provide the community with information about Visio. We will try to provide both technical information as well as trivia. Visio has been around for thirteen years and gone through almost as many versions. Five years ago it...


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