Visimation's Visio Forums

Simulating dropdown menus in website mockups (by: jonathank - 07/18/2008 @ 14:09:45)

Please note that there is a typo in the formula above: Geometry1.NowShow should be Geometry1.NoShow. I threw that in on purpose to make sure everyone was paying attention :-)

Attached is a sample implementation. The double-clickable menubar item is the group container, and the menu items and menu background are members of that group. I set the Protection.LockCalcWH before adding them to the group to keep the alignment box from resizing. Note that double-clicking won't work for submenus, as it will be interpreted as either a subselection or a double-click on the top menu. This is another example of how using right-menu actions and smarttags is more reliable than double-clicking for adding custom functionality to a shape.

To create the second menubar item, I just copied the first. A better way would be to make a master on the document stencil, so that changes made there will propagate to all instances.

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Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Template for application relationship diagram (by: jonathank - 07/11/2008 @ 16:27:19)

There's a video on this subject at http://visiotoolbox.com/Trainings.aspx?trainingid=1&aid=135 . You can use the UML Component Diagram for this task, but the important thing to remember is that diagrams are supposed to make something complex easier to understand. If it communicates effectively, it's "right." If it uses all of the "correct" UML shapes but is difficult to understand, it's "wrong."

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

copy/paste dilemmas (by: jonathank - 07/08/2008 @ 08:46:13)

Here's a blog about the Off-Page Connector add-on, which provides a form of synchronization that can be used in any Visio document:
http://blogs.msdn.com/visio/archive/2006/06/27/647570.aspx. But what I was getting at before was that your synchronization needs are too specific to have a good likelihood of being addressed out-of-the-box. Without knowing anything about what it is that you are diagramming, I can't recommend any third-party solutions. Developing custom solutions is Visimation's main line of business, so if you think you might need something developed for your specific use, email me privately.

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Drawing Automation (by: jonathank - 07/01/2008 @ 18:12:03)

Hi Aaron. This is a different topic from what Frank asked about, so it should really go into a new topic in the Automation category (blame Frank for creating a very generic topic name).

As with any custom Visio behavior, the first decision you need to make is what your solution architecture is going to be. VBA? A windows form that uses the Visio ActiveX control? There are resources that cover this question well, listed in the developer resources/FAQ section.

I'm assuming that you're not here for advice on network programming. The Visio part is very easy. You just need a reference to the shape you want to color. From that you get a reference to the cell in the ShapeSheet that governs the color, whose formula you will modify. Familiarize yourself with the Visio object model and ShapeSheet to see how to get those references and which cell to modify. The object model and ShapeSheet reference are available in the Visio SDK and on MSDN.

A good design would be to add a custom property/Shape Data field or User-defined cell to your shape, which will hold the result of the ping. Using the Visio ShapeSheet editor, write a formula in the foreground color cell that colors the shape according to that value. Your code would modify the value in the Shape Data field. This design would separate the appearance from the code that does the pinging.

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Import data wizard (by: jonathank - 06/27/2008 @ 13:53:16)

I assume you meant Shape Data window instead of Space Data Window. If you checked the check box in the wizard to include all columns, then all the fields from the query should be included in the shapes' shape data. Double-check by looking at the Shape Data section of one of your space shapes' ShapeSheets. There should be unnamed rows (Row_XXX) for each field that the wizard couldn't map to those built into the Space shape.

The wizard cannot import spaces, people, and assets all at once. Run it once for the spaces, then place all of the space shapes in the appropriate locations on your floor plan. Run it again to place people into their proper spaces, then again for assets.

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Apply Visio Custom FillPattern to shape using C# (by: jonathank - 06/25/2008 @ 09:12:01)

Recording a VB macro while performing an action through the UI is a good way to find out how to do something programmatically. Doing this with the creation of a custom fill pattern reveals that the process is to add a master to the document and set its PatternFlags property to visMasIsFillPat + a constant for the type of fill pattern.

As for applying the pattern, this is done through the ShapeSheet. Set the formula in the FillPattern cell to "USE(name of fill pattern master)".

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Importing multiple text fields from Excel (by: jonathank - 06/11/2008 @ 05:22:41)

If you edit the worksheet object by double-clicking it, you can resize it to increase the displayed area.

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Flowchart with parellel mode (by: jonathank - 06/11/2008 @ 05:18:30)

Here's a discussion on this from our archive:

http://www.shapesource.com/forums/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=1155

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

importing excel data to create an org. chart (by: jonathank - 06/06/2008 @ 10:13:56)

I know you are not the first person to come across this problem but I don't know the cause or the solution. What has changed since the last time you tried creating an org chart from this data?

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Link to pages (by: jonathank - 06/04/2008 @ 09:54:18)

What I understand from your question is that you have two shapes on a page. One of them has its double-click behavior set to "Go to page N" and the other is "Go to page M." However, when either is double-clicked, the drawing turns to page N. Is that correct? Either way, you need to provide more information. Perhaps you could start by opening the ShapeSheet for each shape (Window > Show ShapeSheet) and tell us the contents of the EventDblClick cells (in the Event section, towards the bottom).

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Export Jpg High Resolution (by: jonathank - 06/02/2008 @ 11:28:51)

VisGuy has a blog entry that is related to this question:
http://www.visguy.com/2006/09/18/export-all-pages-in-document/

Basically, the bad news is that the export filter settings are not exposed through the API. But perhaps you can open the Save As... dialog through DoCmd and then modify the settings through SendKeys calls.

But perhaps the most straightforward approach in this situation is to automate the resizing of all of your objects before exporting. This would effectively be the same as using a higher resolution.

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Tricky visio web integration (by: jonathank - 06/02/2008 @ 11:02:03)

Keep in mind that the web versions of your drawings are completely open to editing, as they are composed of HTML, XML, javascript, and CSS.
You have at least three options. One is to publish the rack views to HTML, then copy your base data center view over to your first published drawing and edit the hyperlinks so that they point to the HTML versions of the rack views instead of the Visio drawing pages. Then republish the first drawing to include the base data center view. The second is to merge your two drawings, and then hack the dropdown list so that it doesn't display the rack views. I was able to do this in a test drawing by editing the following line in the main html file:

var g_FileList = new  Array(new FileEntry (1, 0, "Page-1", "png_1.htm", ""),[...]);

The third option uses the same idea, but instead of merging the drawings and then removing the file entries you don't want, manually add the file entry for your base data center view.

On the face of it, the first option doesn't require meddling with any HTML or javascript, but in reality you might have to do a little manual editing to get it to behave the way you want.

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Web page shapes for Visio (by: jonathank - 05/19/2008 @ 10:05:25)

How about the Common Controls stencil that ships with Visio Professional 2007?
Software and Database > Software > Common Controls

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Insert pictures on orgchart by vba (by: jonathank - 05/19/2008 @ 10:02:48)

There's a thread on this topic on the newsgroup microsoft.public.visio.developer, starting December 3rd 2007. If you don't have a Usenet reader, there are a number of web front ends, including Google's. The URL for the thread via the Google front end is http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.visio.developer/browse_thread/thread/2f77659e64abf9fd#

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com

Need help using to and from shape information (by: gdalton - 05/13/2008 @ 19:15:54)

Thanks Jonathan! I won't waste any more time in the shapesheet then!
George

quote:
Originally posted by jonathank

There really isn't a good way to do this (that I know of) without using some custom code (in VBA or some type of add-in/add-on), because Visio doesn't give you access to a formula as a string within the ShapeSheet. Any reference to the BegTrigger or EndTrigger cells will gives you the result of the formula, not the formula itself. Hence you can't use FIND and REPLACE to parse the shape name out of the formula.

Jonathan
www.visimation.com
www.shapesource.com