Can duplicate objects be removed? How about close duplicates?

[Michael Pollard]

I was provided an AutoCAD drawing of a building floorplan which I imported
into Visio 2003 Pro. This drawing has many duplicate objects, some being
identical duplicates on top of the original, some being close duplicates,
offset by a pixel or two when zoomed to 3000% percent. Worse, some have a
long line segment, and overlaid/under it, on the same layer, is the same line
comprised of several smaller segments to cover the same distance. Right now
I'm selecting one section at a time, deleting it to see if there are more
behind, and undoing if there are not. Since this is a large drawing, it is a
tedious task. Any ideas?

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

One slight improvement over your current method would be to do a drag select
around the shape. If you only get a set of green selection handles, you
have a single shape. If you get magenta selection handles, you have
multiple shapes.

Beyond this I can imagine an automation utility that uses the
SpatialNeighbors method to identify all the shapes within the vicinity of a
shape. It would take some thought as to how to use this information to find
duplicates. One idea might be the BoundingBox method, which could tell you
if two shapes have similar geometry boundaries.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Michael Pollard]

Thanks for the tip - I should have thought of that, but didn't. As for the
other, I thought it might be complicated, just hoped there might be a way...