Select and Filter and Sort Layout

[Visio Guy]

A feature that I find myself very frequently building into custom solutions to a certain extent is code to filter and select shapes. Some examples:

- Selecting all shapes of a class (defined by me, using a special User.Class cell and value).
- Selecting all instances of a master (this is built into the API)
- Sorting shapes left-to-right, or top-to-bottom based on shape data field values.
- Other search and sort operations

The Visio UI has a few "Select Special" options, such as By Role and By Layer. This is nice, but more UI options, backed by APIs would be valuable to power users and developers alike.

A natural extension of this implementation would be to add some matrix and circular layouts of non-connected shapes. An example: layout all the PC shapes on the page, sorted by User Name, in an M x N grid.