johnvisiomvp

Visio – Rip out the ShapeSheet!

The Visio Shapesheet has been a core part of Visio almost from the beginning. Though, over the years, it has undergone some revisions to handle new cells, it is basically unchanged. Now, it is long overdue for a major overhaul. (and give shape developers some love) To line up with the Office 365, Visio willContinue reading “Visio – Rip out the ShapeSheet!”

Visio – Making a point

Visio does have a tool for adding Connection points, but it does not have a tool for nudging that point if you missed the first time or decided at a later date you anted it elsewhere. Normally, Visio Connection points are simple, middle of the shape, one of the corners or the center of oneContinue reading “Visio – Making a point”

@DirectEnergy Pirates

I have been a long time Enbridge/Direct Energy customer going back to the Consumer Gas days. I have fended off a number of companies that pretended to represent Enbridge. It looks like my loyalty was misplaced. It all started with the annual inspection in August of 2014. The Inspector The technician tried to indicate thatContinue reading “@DirectEnergy Pirates”

Bell Fibe not as good as Bell Satellite

Back in December, service from my ISP was less than tolerable, so I switched to Bell. At the time I was convinced to “upgrade” to Fibre from satellite. I had had satellite for a number of years, but despite the doom and gloom from the cable company, I had very few weather related outages. WhenContinue reading “Bell Fibe not as good as Bell Satellite”

Open Shape Surgery for the Visio Developer

One of the first gotchas for new Visio developers is the UnGroup command. Visio shapes are simple, they can have one colour and one line type. To make a traffic light, you need to group a red circle, yellow circle and a green circle. When grouped, Visio will take a collection of shapes and createContinue reading “Open Shape Surgery for the Visio Developer”

UWP Samples generate hundred of errors?

For the past few months I have had problems trying to run any of the Windows 10 UWP samples. Each attempt resulted in hundreds of errors. Yesterday, thanks to Colin Melia and a little Google spelunking I may have found the issue and the solution. The Googling turned up https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-universal-samples/issues/182 which indicates the same issues andContinue reading “UWP Samples generate hundred of errors?”

Taming Geometry Sections in Visio

Ever create a pair of shapes in Visio, butted them together and do a Union operations and find that the joining line between the shapes does not disappear and find that the new shape has two geometry sections? So, before you start to copy rows from one section to the other, place a rectangle shapeContinue reading “Taming Geometry Sections in Visio”

Shape Developers need Love too!

It has been a while since the demise of ShapeStudio. It was not the greatest, but it did help developers create series of shapes. Using the Shapesheet is not for the faint of heart. The shapesheet is a powerful tool for creating shapes and adding functionality, but, but it is labour intensive. What is neededContinue reading “Shape Developers need Love too!”

Dual Outlets

The VBA code to stack shapes was used to create a series of shapes that represented inserts into the cap of a bottle that allowed hoses to be connected. For the single connections, the shapes making up the stack were horizontally symmetrical, so after stacking the shapes it was a simple matter of aligning allContinue reading “Dual Outlets”

Are Visio Shapes Stacked against you?

Recently I have been working on some Visio shapes that were basically a stack of rectangles. Though Visio has tools for aligning and distributing shapes, it does not have an easy way of stacking shapes. If you are lucky enough to have shapes that are multiples of the grid size, it is a piece ofContinue reading “Are Visio Shapes Stacked against you?”