I have been exploring how Format codes are used in Visio. Recently I came across a comment on one of Visio Guy’s blogs, detect-drawing-units-in-the-shapesheet, back in April, the poster was asking about measurements in nanoseconds, something that Visio Guy had indicated Visio did not support. Actually he indicated units that Visio did support and nanoseconds was not one of them.
The poster mention that he had found a Timing Diagram stencil that included a measurement shape in nanoseconds, but was unable to figure out how it was done.
I found the stencil. It was a Visio 3 stencil called TimeDia.vss, created by a CompuServe user and took a look at the measurement shape. There was no magic. The shape used a unit-less field in the text and that was followed by the string “ns”. The nanoseconds were hard coded. So, the shape could be stretched, changing the value, but it would appear to be in nanoseconds.
Rather than hard coding the units, this shape can be embellished by replacing the text with Shape Data so a user would have control over the units that were displayed. The Shape Data can be a simple text string, or a list with choices,
or a variable list that the user can embellish. My preference is to use a Fixed List because any changed in a variable list (other than to the master) is not replicated to the other copies of the shape.
In this case, I also set the master shape to “Ask on Drop”
John… Visio MVP in x-aisle
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john Visio MVP 