What is the best way to hide shapes independently?

[healthNut]

I created a master shape and I want to hide parts of the different instances independently.
So hiding a part of instance A should not affect instance B
I've been doing it with layers but it hides ALL the parts of the multiple instances.

There's so many ways to do it, scaling and so on but hoping to learn from the experience of others that has done it.

[JuneTheSecond]

My practice is to use NoShow cells in Geometry sections in the ShapeSheet.
Here is a document that has some expression about NoShow Cell.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visio/archive/2007/07/20/make-your-own-data-graphic-icon-sets.aspx

[healthNut]

Thanks, I played with the NoShow but it seems to only work on shapes that are drawn by Visio. I have imported PNGs and it seems to only respond to Foreign Image Properties's Transparency cell.

[Visio Guy]

This was one of my first articles, and it has a fairly exhaustive list of hiding techniques:

The Hidden World of Visio Shapes

When you use the ShapeSheet, such us the NoShow cell, keep in mind that every subshape inside of a group has to have the cell set as well. They can all refer to NoShow cell(s) in the top-group's ShapeSheet to create a cascading effect, but the subordinates all need to be wired-up.

[healthNut]

Yes, that hidden world article was very helpful. It started me on the layers path but now I have to others such as NoShow and Transparency.