Adapting Existing Visio Shapes

You don't have to start from scratch to create your own shapes. In fact, it's usually easier and faster not to. You can save time by finding an existing Microsoft® Visio® shape that resembles what you need and then modifying it.

There's an art to revising existing shapes and groups. This section provides tips for editing existing objects. For details about using the tools mentioned, see the Microsoft Visio Help (on the Help menu, click Microsoft Visio Help). For details about how the drawing page representation of a shape compares to its ShapeSheet® representation, see Examining a Shape in a ShapeSheet Window in Chapter 4, Visio Formulas.

In this section...

Revising Existing Shapes

Revising Existing Groups

Shape Copyrights

Revising Existing Shapes

To revise the geometry of almost any shape, select it with the Pencil tool , and then drag, add, or delete vertices. To change curves, drag a control point or a point's eccentricity handles.

Tip You can select multiple vertices and move them as unit to easily preserve their relative position to each other.

One way to reshape a shape is to drag a vertex (A) with the Pencil tool.

To add a segment, point to where you want to add the segment, hold down the CTRL key, and click with the Pencil tool (A). Then you can drag the new vertex with the Pencil tool to the position you want.

If you want fewer segments in a shape, delete the segments you don't want.

To delete a segment, select a vertex with the Pencil tool (A), and then press DELETE. The segment that the vertex is associated with is deleted. The remaining segments are reshaped accordingly.

How the Visio engine redraws the shape when you delete a vertex depends on whether the vertex is at the beginning or end of an open shape, the order that the segments were created in, and whether the segment that follows the vertex you delete is a line or arc. After you delete segments, you might need to adjust the shape by dragging vertices and control points until the shape appears the way you want.

To change the curvature of an arc or freeform curve, drag a control point (A) until the segment appears the way you want.

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Revising Existing Groups

You can take a group apart to see how it works and to revise it; however, you don't actually need to do this to revise a group. You can revise its member shapes by selecting each member shape in the drawing window.

A group can include guides and objects from other applications as well as shapes, and a group can include text and geometry independently of its member shapes. Each object in a group as well as the group has its own set of formulas, so when you ungroup shapes, you lose the group's formulas. However, if you ungroup a group that contains text or geometry, the Visio engine converts that text or geometry into a new shape.

Important If you convert a Visio drawing containing groups to a version of Visio earlier than Visio 2000, any text or geometry associated with a group (rather than its member shapes) will be lost.

You can edit a group and its member shapes directly on the drawing page by selecting the group or member shapes. You can also open a group in the group window.

Note When you select a group on the page, its selection behavior can vary. The group might be selected first, a group member might be selected first, or you might be able to only select the group and not its members.

To change the selection behavior for a group, click Behavior on the Format menu. Under Group behavior, in the Selection list, you can set the group to be selected as Group first (the group can be selected before its members), Group only (only the group can be selected, not its members), or Members first (the members of the group can be selected before the group).

If a group's selection behavior is set to Group only, users will be able to select the group, but not its members.

To open a group in the group window

1. Select the group.

1. On the Edit menu, click Open Group. (If you have named the group by using Special on the Format menu, the group name follows the command Open; otherwise, the command reads Open Group.)

You can edit a group in the drawing window or the group window to work with its member shapes independently. Changes you make in the group window are also reflected in the drawing window.

1. The group in the drawing window with a member shape selected. You can edit the group's member shapes either on the drawing window or in the group window while preserving any formula dependencies among shapes.

1. Shapes in the group window appear as if they were independent, not grouped.

1. Moving a shape off the page in the group window moves it outside the group's alignment box.

Tip After editing a group in the group window, you might need to readjust the width and height of the group so its selection rectangle tightly encloses all the group's shapes. To do this, select the group. On the Shape menu, point to Operations, and then click Update Alignment Box. For details, see Using Alignment Boxes to Snap Shapes to a Grid in Chapter 11, Arranging Shapes in Drawings.

For details about group behavior options, including the ability to drop shapes on top of a group to add them to the group (making the group a "drop target"), see Modifying a Group in Chapter 6, Grouping and Merging Shapes.

Ungrouping groups of shapes

Ungroup a group to end the association between member shapes and work with them independently. Ungrouping discards the group's formulas. If you ungroup an instance of a master, the shape no longer inherits characteristics from the master.

To ungroup shapes

1. Select the group.

1. On the Shape menu, point to Grouping, and then click Ungroup.

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Shape Copyrights

Any shape that you create by revising a native Visio shape will retain the Visio copyright. If you distribute a master with this copyright to another user, that user must have a license to use a stencil that contains the original master.

If you want to distribute a shape free of copyright restrictions, you must create it from scratch. When you create shapes this way, you can apply your own copyright to it, either before or after you create a master from the shape.

To copyright a shape (or see if an existing shape has a copyright)

• Right-click the shape, point to Format, and then click Special.

Important The copyright is a write-once field. Before adding a copyright, make a copy of the shape as backup in case of a typing error.