How to Clip or Mask a Circular Region on a Visio Page?

[david]

hi everybody,
i need to do something in visio that sounds pretty hard but maybe there's a simple solution to do that.
this is what i need to do:
i have a frame with many drawings.  i need to mask the frame with a circle so that i will always see the drawings only inside the circle.  outside the circle the frame should always be black no matter where the circle is.  in other words, i can see the drawings of the frame only through the circle.  and if i want to see what is drawn on the upper left corner of the frame i should move the circle to that corner.

i didn't find a way to do that.  anyone has an idea?  any kind of idea will be helpful.  i can write code if neccesary.

thanks in advance
David

[Paul Herber]

like this?

[david]

it's perfect!! just what i needed.

thank you very much!
David

[Paul Herber]

Wapperdude has another solution that he'll be posting when his part of the world wakes up.

[david]

excellent!

is there a possibility to allow the user changing the size of the external square? i don't see such a possibility in your example.  you can drag and change sizes only of the circle inside the square (which i btw changed to a little square).  i'd like to allow it also to the square (meaning that the square will not necessarily hide the whole frame).

thanks
David

[Paul Herber]

Yes, my shape was very quick and dirty to get something before it got too late here.
Open the shapesheet for the shape (menu Window -> Show Shapesheet) and edit the geometry2 section, it's just a square +/- 1000mm, edit as you see fit. Maybe someone has time to make the shape more general.

[david]

that's not what i meant.
i know i can manually change the numbers in geometry2 to whatever i want.  i want to allow the USER to change the sizes of the outside square with the mouse.  just like he can change the sizes of the inside circle with the mouse.

[Visio Guy]

This tackles the problem from the other side, so to speak:

Masking Images in Visio

[wapperdude]

Have a look at this -- changes size, selects between square and circle...

[wapperdude]

Ah!  I should have placed this on a separate stencil...that way it's available for drag and drop...re-post for convenience...

[wapperdude]

Can't leave it alone .. better circle, variable aspect ratio 

[david]

thank you very much to everybody.  i used your examples in my work and as to the external square i added properties for the user so he can change the sizes of that square through the properties.  he can't do it with the mouse but still it works fine.

this forum is great! very very helpful.
thank you
David

[wapperdude]

Who's in charge of quality control around here?  The more features you add to something, the more that can go wrong, and the more test cases that should be run.  Sign.     Found a bug with the MagicWindow if you go to landscape, circle.  Looks kinda funny actually.  Well, hopefully this fixes the problem...    

Sorry, just feel compelled to get it right.  I'll stop with this entry though. 

[david]

thanks man .

[wapperdude]

OK.  I lied.  But it's Paul Herber's fault.  He made a couple of suggestions and provided some enthusiastic encouragement, so, here's an updated version that includes metric -- for those of you not lucky enough to live at the center of the universe, aka, California.