John Goldsmith's visLog

Forcing AutoConnect in Visio

The AutoConnect feature in Visio has been around for a few versions now and in 2010 it included the ability to use Quick Shapes.  I think it’s a great feature and really speeds building professional looking diagrams.  That said it doesn’t suit every scenario and if you find yourself in this situation then this post is about a workaround to prevent the user from turning the feature on or off at document level.

Using Bitwise functions in Visio (Part 1)

This is the first of a two-part post on how to use bitwise functions in the ShapeSheet.  The main driver for this is to make it easier to build complex, but maintainable shapes enabling you to quickly swap between states, both in terms of behaviour and visual appearance. 

Before I get into the ‘how’, in the next post, I thought I’d deal with the ‘what’ in this one.  If you’re already familiar with bitwise operations then feel free to skip to the next post – if not, then don’t worry, the logic here is pretty simple once you understand what’s going on…