Bug in Brainstorming Layout

[nv]

Hello everyone!

I'm working on a brainstorming diagram in Visio 2007 on Windows 7 on a computer, which is running very stable. I'm adding or changing elements and connections every once in a while. The diagram contains 3 or 4 association lines.

I've already had a bug where Visio showed me a lot of File not Found messages every time I opened the file or copied the elements with Ctrl-C. I was able to work around that bug by copying and pasting the diagrams to a new brainstorming file.

Now I have a different bug in this new file: I've recently added some more subelements (sub-subjects? My Visio is German. I don't know the English wording) to the diagram. They are being layouted in many very wrong ways. The old elements' layouts are fine. The attached screenshot depicts one way Visio layouted my diagram.


I've tried to export and re-import the diagram. But if I do that not only do I lose the separation of the diagram into sheets but I also lose the associations.

I'v tried to save the diagram to vdx-file, but Visio seems to save the thought-hierarchy wrongly and after trying to manually correct it and save it again it was just broken in a different way.

Are my problems related to a known bug? Are there workarounds?

[Paul Herber]

Could you post the actual document in .vsd format?
Take out all expect one page if you want (as long as it is a page that goes wrong!)

[nv]

Thanks Paul. I'd rather not post my document publicly, but I did mail it to your support address.

[Paul Herber]

Er, well, I'm not sure if I really have the time at the moment, I'm busy moving web hosting for 20+ domain names as well as updating websites and my own products ...
I barely have time to monitor what is going on here and on the newsgroups. I'm sure I miss a lot of useful stuff.

[Visio Guy]

Grüezi nv,

Kannst mir deine Datei auch schicken.

Welche Version Visios verwendest du?

[Yacine]

nv,
wenn Du  deine Zeichnungen anonymisieren und dem gesamten Forum schicken würdest, wären deine Chancen auf Antworten entsprechend größer und Du würdest unsere Heroes nicht so sehr belasten .

[Paul Herber]

Right, I've taken your document, deleted all except one page, then deleted all the shapes on that page. Then I've created a brand new blank Brainstorming diagram (metric) and used my Visio Super Utilities, menu SuperUtils -> Document -> Compare Documents. It generates the output below. The sections 'Place Style' onwards are important. Look at the page sheet properties and edit the values:

Code

Page widths different
  420 mm
  297.00000000001 mm
Page heights different
  297 mm
  210 mm
Drawing size types different
  5
  0
Place Style values different
  7
  1
Place Depth values different
  3
  0
Route Style different
  13
  1
User section row count different.
  2
  1
Page layer count different
No shapes to compare.
Compare finished
8 differences and 0 warnings.

[nv]

Thanks a lot, Paul. These differences don't seem to explain the problem, though. (Not to me anyway.)

I changed PlaceStyle, PlaceDepth and RouteStyle to the original values in the ShapeSheet, saved the file, reopenend it and the auto-layout seemed to work fine in the vdx-copy I had made. Unfortunately it threw "Wirtschaftliche Chancen" out of the visible diagram hierarchy and attached it's children to another shape. I thus deleted "Wirtschaftliche Chancen" and all its children (and their children) and added them again manually using the brainstorming commands to add subelements. The layout still is messed up in the same way. It seems that auto-layout
a) is trying to avoid the paper and
b) has special trouble laying out the children of "Wirtschaftliche Chancen".

The same procedure in the vsd-file yielded no results by just changing the page-properties.

Also, it seems the page-properties are changed by the auto-layout. I opend a brand new brainstorming file, added a mainsubject and after pushing the auto-layout button the properties were changed like in my problematic file.

One of the lines in the User Section (LastAppliedLayout) is due to the fact, that I had played with designs, I think. I can't see where the other line (OutlineWndPos) comes from.



Just out of curiosity. If you happen to have Visio 2010, does the auto-layout work differently for my file?