Visio® 2007 Bible

Chapter 34. Customizing Shapes Using ShapeSheets

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Opening ShapeSheets

• Viewing ShapeSheet sections

• Adding ShapeSheet sections

• Exploring ShapeSheet sections

• Writing ShapeSheet formulas

Throughout this book, you'll run across tips and techniques that talk about making changes in a shape's ShapeSheet when there's no way to make a shape do what you want from a drawing page. In reality, shapes are collections of fields that control every aspect of shape appearance and behavior. The shapes you see on a drawing page are graphical representations of the Visio shapes. Visio commands and dialog boxes are simply convenient interfaces to these fields from the graphical representations on a drawing page. Alternatively, the ShapeSheet in Visio provides access to these same fields in a spreadsheet-like view. The values and formulas in the fields you see in the ShapeSheet specify every line, arc, and text block of a shape; how the shape looks, and how it behaves.

So, a shape on a drawing page and its ShapeSheet are two views of the same Visio shape. Whether you modify a shape on a drawing page or in a ShapeSheet, Visio changes values in the underlying shape definition.

Of course, not every shape requires a value for every field. For example, if a shape doesn't use connection points, the ShapeSheet doesn't waste space by filling in fields with connection point attributes. Even so, Visio needs a significant number of fields to define everything about shape appearance and behavior. If a field ...