.Net and Visio 2003

[Dan Zruna]

Since Visio 2003 came out with little to no documentation for developers where can I go for info? Is the SDK for Visio 2002 worth reviewing? Should I wait for the new SDK if I want to integrate with a .Net application?

 

[Chris Roth]

The Visio 2002 SDK is worth playing with. Many concepts carry over.

Some newer articles relating to Visio 2003 are here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/visio/

The biggest developer feature in 2003 is the Visio Drawing control - an
ActiveX version of the Visio drawing engine that you can place on your own
form, in your own application. It is VERY cool.

Also, if not in the 2002 SDK, search for "Building a COM Add-in, .NET, Visio
2002" there's and article out there somewhere on this topic, if it interests
you. The general principles will be the same for 2003 (...and the nit-picky
little things that are different can be solved in the forum...)

--

Hope this helps,

Chris Roth
Visio MVP
visioguy @ extremely warm mail.com

Since Visio 2003 came out with little to no documentation for developers

where can I go for info? Is the SDK for Visio 2002 worth reviewing? Should I
wait for the new SDK if I want to integrate with a .Net application?

 

[Dan Zruna]

Thanks Chris. I'll check out the SDK. I'm going to create a workflow engine that relies on Visio for the GUI. I'd like to be able to drag process blocks on the page, fill out a corresponding form that would have drop down lists populated from web services and link things up with connectors. I've gathered that Visio is my best for doing this kind of thing. Let me know what you think.

 

[Mai-lan [MS]]

It sounds like a great scenario for the Visio ActiveX control. A couple of suggestions
1. You can also automatically drop shapes on a page based on the user selections in a form or some other form-based action. It depends on if you want the end user to see and interact with Visio stencils, or if you simply want to provide the Visio drawing control as a "canvas" that your application creates and manipulates diagrams on. Use OPenEx when playing around with the control because it lets you control the behavior and appearance of the stencil in your application.
2. For the "link things up with connectors", keep in mind that the relationship between shapes can be very easy or very complicated if you are driving them programmatically. Are you planning to link shapes as they are dropped? Or link them by certain values or properties of shapes? Or link them depending on the region of the page or diagram?

Just a couple things to think about. If you have other design questions, feel free to post them in the microsoft.public.visio.developer newsgroup to get a wider distribution and input.

Thanks
Mai-la