By now, you have probably resized and
rotated a shape or two. After all, you just select a shape and pull on
the blue things! Here are a few tips that will give you finer control
over resizing and rotating, and round out your knowledge of the process.
Resizing 2D Shapes
When
you select a 2D shape, you see the eight square resizing handles around
the perimeter of the shape. Pulling the center handles resizes the
width or the height of the shape independently. If you pull on the
corner handles, the aspect ratio of the shape is maintained.
You can override this corner handle behavior by
holding down the Shift key. When you do this, you can independently
size the width and height of the shape at the same time. This shifty
behavior is the reverse of what you might have experienced in other
Microsoft Office applications where you have to press Shift to preserve
the aspect ratio of objects.
Some Visio shapes have locked aspect ratios because
the shape designer thought it was important to preserve the
width-to-height ratio. In these cases, the Shift trick doesn’t have any
effect.
Resizing 1D Shapes
When you resize 1D shapes, such as connectors,
lines, or Block stencil arrows, you manipulate the two endpoint
handles. Dragging these handles effectively changes the angle and
length of the shape at the same time.
You can constrain this angle to be perfectly
horizontal, vertical, or along a 45-degree increment by holding the
Shift key as you drag an end.
Rotating 2D Shapes
You’ve likely noticed the “lollipop” handle that
appears atop selected 2D shapes. This is the rotation handle that lets
you spin the shape.
You can control the granularity of the rotation by
moving the cursor closer or further from the center of rotation. When
you are very close to the center, the rotation snaps to 5-degree
increments. When you are far from the center, the snap is in 0.1-degree
increments. You can watch the Angle field in the status bar at the
bottom of the window to see the angle value change.
As soon as you mouse over the rotation handle, you see the rotation point appear. This is commonly called the shape’s pin
by Visio aficionados. It serves as the center of rotation for the
shape, as well as the insertion point when the shape is dragged from a
stencil. Ninety-nine percent of Visio shapes have the pin at the
center, but you can freely move it to a different location. Figure 1 shows a practical application of moving the rotation point.
Creating a Radial Array of Arrows
Figure 1 combines a number of techniques described so far to create a nice, radial array of arrows. Give it a try!
1. | Create a new diagram using General, Block Diagram template.
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2. | On the View tab, make sure that the grid is visible.
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3. | From the Blocks stencil, drag out the “2D single” shape and zoom in on it.
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4. | Select the shape and mouse over the “lollipop” rotation handle.
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5. | When
the rotation point appears, grab it and move it off the left side of
the shape, but keep it vertically centered, as shown in Figure 1.
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6. | Make
a copy of the shape, exactly on top of itself. To do this, select the
original shape and start dragging it. Then press the Ctrl and Shift
keys. Ctrl causes a copy to be made, and Shift constrains movement so
you can easily drop the copy right on top of the original.
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7. | Make
six more copies of the shape by pressing the F4 key six times. This
repeats the last duplication operation. You should now have eight
arrows, all directly on top of each other so it looks like only one
arrow. |
8. | Select
all the shapes by dragging a selection rectangle around them. Notice
the heavy magenta outline for the selection highlight. This indicates
more than one shape is selected.
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9. | Click
an empty space on the diagram to deselect all shapes. Now drag all
eight shapes to different locations—just to verify that you really have
eight shapes.
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10. | Press
Ctrl+Z repeatedly to undo the movements of the shapes in the last step.
Do this until all are back on top of each other and it looks like just
one arrow on the page.
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11. | Rotate
each arrow into position. Select one shape at a time. Rotate it by
pulling on the “lollipop” handle. Keep the cursor close to the rotation
point so that you get the 5-degree snapping. Watch the angle in the
status bar and rotate the shapes to 45-degree multiples: 45°, 90°,
135°, 180°, −135°, −90°, and −45° degrees.
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One last rotation tip: If you find yourself
frequently rotating shapes in 90-degree increments, you can quickly
rotate counterclockwise by pressing Ctrl+L and clockwise by pressing
Ctrl+R.
