I recently received a request from a user who wanted the ability to: 1. rotate the text for the Bracket Interval shape to an angle such as 45deg. 2. display the interval name above the date instead of below. I took the built-in shape and customized it to support these two requirements, allowing you to…
Visio Slide Show
(updated 6/11/09 – added support for a dialog to allow you to set the interval between slides) Recently I was asked if it was possible to set a timer to automatically switch to the next page when in full screen mode, producing a slide show style presentation mode. I decided to do this using VBA…
State management for CommandBars v2.0
After I posted my source for managing CommandBarButton and CommandBarPopup objects I received a few requests to include management of CommandBarButtons that control the state of AnchorBar windows. As you know you can add your own windows within the Visio drawing window, similar to the Shape Data window. These type of windows are typically controlled…
Check before you customize CommandBars…
Recently I have noticed a few add-ins that lock customization on the MenuBar object after the add-in has made its changes, i.e. adding a custom menu. There are valid reasons for using this functionality but you also have to consider the impact to other add-ins that may be installed. Example: menuBar.Protection = MsoBarProtection.msoBarNoCustomize If you…
Reset the Menu and Toolbars
Most add-ins that are developed for Visio make modifications to the Visio menu and toolbars. The add-in developer is responsible for making the appropriate changes to the Visio UI in a manner that does not affect the operation of Visio or other add-ins that maybe installed. They are also responsible for cleaning up their changes….
Using WPF Windows in Visio add-ins
With the release of .NET Framework 3.0, Windows Presentation Foundation was introduced. WPF is the new UI development environment for forms based development. If you are not familiar with WPF you can take a look at this introduction article on MSDN. Setup your Visio add-in to support WPF All you need to do to…
The WBS menu is not available after installing WBS Modeler add-in for Visio
After installing the WBS Modeler add-in for Visio and creating a new diagram based on the WBS Modeler template the WBS Modeler menu should be available on the Visio menu as shown in Figure 1 below. Figure 1 Issue In some cases the WBS Modeler menu does not appear when opening or creating WBS Modeler…
State management for CommandBars
I thought I would share some wrapper classes that I use in just about all of my Visio add-ins for managing the state of my custom menu and toolbar items. These wrapper classes were a collaborative effort between me and the developers at Visimation, Inc. Before Visio began using CommandBars as the supported method for…
Source for Visio Toolbox add-ins released
I am happy to announce that we just released the source for the following Visio add-ins via CodePlex: Visio add-in for Disk Space Monitoring Visio add-In for Rack Server Virtualization Visio add-in for System Center If you are not familiar with these add-ins take a look at each of them as posted on the…
Create your own Icon-Sets for Data Graphics
You may already know that Visio 2007 has a new feature called Data Graphics which can be applied to shapes to reflect the value of a property or formula within that shape. For example, you might have a shape that has a Health property which can contain the values ‘Success’ or ‘Error’. Before Visio 2007…