Microsoft® Office Visio® 2003 Step by Step

Organizing Shapes in Office Layouts by Using Layers

For some drawing types in Visio, shapes are preassigned to layers —categories that help you organize and manage related shapes. Visio can show, hide, lock, print, snap, glue, and color and change the transparency of shapes based on their layer assignment. Layers give you a great deal of flexibility over what you want to display and how you want categories of shapes to behave or look. For example, a space plan with everything but the electrical equipment and structural shapes, such as walls, doors, and windows, hidden would be very helpful in determining the best cable routes for the office. You can accomplish this by hiding anything that's not on the electrical or structural layers, or setting ...