Microsoft® Office Visio® 2003 Step by Step

Grouping and Merging Shapes

You can create a variety of simple shapes with the Visio drawing tools. However, you can also create complex shapes by grouping or merging two or more shapes:

• When you group two shapes, you create a third shape, the group, which contains all the original shapes and retains their formatting. You can still select and modify each of the individual shapes in the group. Use the Grouping commands on the Shape menu to create and work with groups.

• When you merge shapes, you combine or break up (depending on the command you use) the existing shapes to create new shapes. The original shapes are discarded. Use the Operations commands on the Shape menu to merge shapes.

Tip

If you want to preserve the original shapes when merging shapes, ...