Microsoft® Office Visio® 2007 Inside Out

Identifying Shape Behavior

Just as vertices and line segments constitute basic shape geometry, lines and boxes represent the basic differences in shape behavior. Behavior means the way you interact with shapes on the page—that is, moving, sizing, and connecting them. When a shape behaves like a line, it can be stretched and rotated in one step by dragging an endpoint. For example, the Wall shape on the Office Layout Shapes stencil behaves like a line. 1-D shapes have this behavior. When a shape behaves like a box, it can have up to eight selection handles, including corner handles that you can use to resize the shape. 2-D shapes have this behavior.

The section titled “Creating a Diagram” in Chapter 2, “Quickly Formatting Shapes and Diagrams,” ...