Tips for deconflicting shapes programmatically

[dgmoore]

I am a long-time MS Office developer but have no direct experience
with Visio. I have been asked to investigate automating a very large
and complex Visio chart that is now maintained manually at great
effort and expense.

Can anybody advise me as to tips/hints/algorithms for deconflicting
shapes on complex charts (these are Gantt charts with extensive
callouts - placing the Gantt bars and symbols is easy, but placing the
labels so they do not overlap is difficult).

I'd appreciate any info anybody could provide.

Thanks

 

[Paul Herber]

I am a long-time MS Office developer but have no direct experience
with Visio. I have been asked to investigate automating a very large
and complex Visio chart that is now maintained manually at great
effort and expense.

Can anybody advise me as to tips/hints/algorithms for deconflicting
shapes on complex charts (these are Gantt charts with extensive
callouts - placing the Gantt bars and symbols is easy, but placing the
labels so they do not overlap is difficult).

I'd appreciate any info anybody could provide.

You can discover the Gantt chart frame coordinates so that your
callouts don't overlap that. That is the shape "Gantt chart frame", it
has cells PinX, PinY, Width and Height.

There is also a method to see whether shapes are nearby or overlap,
look at the page.spatialsearch method.

 

[dgmoore]

You can discover the Gantt chart frame coordinates so that your
callouts don't overlap that. That is the shape "Gantt chart frame", it
has cells PinX, PinY, Width and Height.

There is also a method to see whether shapes are nearby or overlap,
look at the page.spatialsearch method.

Great - thanks very much!
Dave