Month: March 2006

Creating Automation Friendly Visio diagrams

By visio

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 diagram. Visio allows the user two views of their diagram; the one most people are familiar with is the one that appears on the screen or the printed page; the second is what a program can “see” of the drawing through automation. What may appear logical in the diagram, may not … Continue reading Creating Automation Friendly Visio diagrams

Visio’s Most Useful Tool – The Macro Recorder

By visio

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 is useful for explaining the details of a command, but there is not enough examples explaining how to string several commands together, the macro recorder fills in this gap. For example, to simply answer the question; “How do you create two shapes  and connect them together using VBA?” The macro recorder will generate the following macro. Sub Macro1() … Continue reading Visio’s Most Useful Tool – The Macro Recorder