Visio Newbie Problems

[calbat]

Hello Guys i hope i posted this in the right section,

 I’m currently working on a project as a working student with Visio and need some help because I’m working for the first time with this program.

 At the Moment I’m trying to glue 2 Shapes to each other. I have one big Shape, where I have 14 “slots” in which my other smaller shape should fit/glue in. Problem is, that I just can’t get it right..

 I tried it with Connection Points, but they don’t seem to work in my case. The two parts don’t stick together as I would like them to. I looked at racks from different companies and tried to adapt their settings for example in the Shape Sheet but couldn’t understand all of it as I’m a total newbie on Visio and on programming/VBA etc

Maybe someone could take a look on it. I uploaded two of my shapes as an example. I drew the bigger one myself with Visio while the smaller one is a .svg file. I hope someone can find a solution..

PS: Sorry for my bad English.. didn’t have English lessons for more than a year now

[calbat]

Forgot the File 

[aledlund]

I didn't download the stencil (I would have preferred just a vsd). The rack connection task is very common and as you've noted is dependent heavily on understanding connection points. The first part (connection points) has a lot of good articles on this site, so I won't go into it. The second part of connecting what externally appears to be 2D shapes is also interesting. Here's an excellent article on the subject.

http://www.visiozone.com/?p=298

al

[vojo]

keep in mind that
   -if there are too many shapes on the page, the whole connection/snap thing doesnt work reliably
   -if shapes too close or too complicated, visio has hard time reconciling what specific shape to go after.
   -connections like snapping 2 shapes together works at only 1 point.....cant snap 2 shapes using 2 points on each shape.
    (while not conclusive, I have always had problems snapping 3 shapes...1 to 2 and 2 to 3.....may be a variation here.

usually for this kind of thing, people will make a 2D shape (either real shapes or JPEG) then convert to a 1D shape (line with 2 handles), do some final polishing (LOCPINX, LOCPINY, etc)  and use the line ends to snap to things.....HP on visio cafe does this alot as a tool to build up server components ==>servers==>racks of servers.   I believe this works better because I believe the line ends are easier for visio to deal with in a crowded diagram.

[wapperdude]

To add to what's been said, typically, for adding parts to a rack, the parts, as Vojo indicates, have their behavior converted to 1D.  A signficant advantage is that both ends of a 1D shape can glue to objects.  A 2D shape doesn't do this.  A 2D shape will accept multiple objects for gluing, but, it cannot be moved such that it will glue to multiple objects.

HTH
Wapperdude

[calbat]

Thanks for the help guys. After i converted the Shape to a 1-D Shape snapping worked perfectly

But now i have a new problem.
I now have Master Shapes as 1-D Shapes. But when i drag them on my page they turn 2-D again. So i have to convert it back to 1-D every time which is kind of annoying.
Any ideas how to avoid this? Did i forget something when i changed the Shape to 1-D?

[Jumpy]

Does that happen even if you use a new blank document?

Because in the document stencil of the old document may still be an old master from the time the shape was 2D and every new dropped shape of that type will be a copy of that old master instead of the new master.

So either use a new drawing or delete old masters from document stencil.

[vojo]

new problem does not happen with HP stencils that does this.

Sometimes....after converting to 1D, sometimes to tweak width/height/angle fields aka use GUARD to lock in formula

[aledlund]

It sounds like the original masters might still be in the document stencil.
al

[calbat]

Solved the Problem myself. Shapes changed to 2-D when I added something new to them.

But now i have another question...
Is there a possibility to automatically adjust the size of a shape so that it fits right between two lines when i glue them on my connection points for example?