Question

How does one create specific shapes in microsoft visio that are selectable through the normal interface? I am looking for code like ActivePage.addShape(type: person, 100,100, 50,50)

The msdn and visio help documentation comes across as a bit advanced for a beginner, but is it the case that one has to add a shape manually and then give it an id through vba which can be understood and used again. Or do you have to create a global sub/class and then refer to objects that you have given names to.

Answer 1

The function you need is called Drop. The first argument is dropObject, which can be a reference to another shape, the current selected shape, or a Master object from a Visio stencil.

You can try this out to see how it works:

Dim ShpObj As Visio.Shape
Set ShpObj = ActivePage.Drop(ActiveWindow.Selection, 100, 50)

So, using ActiveWindow.Selection means Visio will duplicate the selected shape and put it at 100, 50.

To get a Master, you need to first find the stencil document that holds the master. Here’s an example, putting a Triangle shape from the Basic Shapes block diagram stencil:

Dim ShpObj As Visio.Shape
Set ShpObj = ActivePage.Drop(Application.Documents("BASIC_U.VSS").Masters("Triangle"))

Setting the result of the Drop function to ShpObj means you can refer to it later in code. Otherwise there is a Shapes collection in the Page class that contains all the shapes in the page.

Hopefully that’ll make a good start for you in programming in Visio VBA.