A Master is a shape definition. It stores all the information about a
shape: it's geometry, text, behaviors, formatting, custom properties, etc.
It also stores the icon you see in the Shapes window. When you open a
drawing and see shapes in the Shapes window, you are looking at Masters.
You can drag a Master onto the drawing to create a Shape instance.
The difference between a Master and a Shape is not that important to most
users, and we often refer to both items as shapes. If you begin to create
your own shapes, Masters are important. You can make a change to a Master
and all its Shape instances in your drawing will update too. This is a good
way to maintain consistency in the drawing. Masters are also an efficient
way to minimize file size and increase performance. By using Masters, each
Shape instance only has to remember the properties that are unique (such as
its position on the page). Everything else is stored once in the Master.
Master Shortcuts are very similar to file shortcuts in Windows. A Master
Shortcut can be found in the Shapes window, and it has an icon. But the
Shortcut refers to another Master. When you drag a Master Shortcut onto the
drawing, Visio finds the Master that the Shortcut refers to and creates a
Shape instance of that Master. Shortcuts are used with the Shape Search
feature. The results from a search are a bunch of Shortcuts. If you drag
one into the drawing, Visio downloads the Master and uses it.
--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
