fryeguy

Earlier I posted some notes on my experience with using the Visio Guy's great advice on how to scale text in your SI5 templates for Visio. Understand that the standard templates that ship with SI5 have this feature already. If you plan on utilizing an existing custom template from SI4 (or just plain Visio), you should be aware of a few tips.

Here are my notes from my experience with creating a completely custom template that utilizes the feature improvements provided by D-Tools.

1. Start by reading all the tutorials provided by the Visio Guy. He really knows his stuff. Then read the D-Tools help section related to this topic. While it is not thorough it is useful.

2. Backup, backup, backup! Before you work on your production templates make copies. The chances are pretty good that things won't be perfect the first time, or the second, and maybe even the third (or 4th or 5th). Bottom line, this is a bit of a tricky procedure and it may take several attempts and days to get it right. Make sure you still have a working template to use in the meantime.

3. Don't be a hero a try to start from scratch. Start with the copy of the Smart Frame L-scape shape that you made. Many formulas are built-in that will make your life easier.

4. I also recommend creating your custom title template in real world units. For example, if you use Arch D (24x36) then you should make your title to fit on 24x36 taking into account printer margins. I find this method much easier to understand when sizing objects.

5. The most complicated part for me to understand was the text scaling issue. The Visio Guy does a good job of describing what you will run into. Many of us have been seeing the text scaling issue for years and didn't know the cause (at least I didn't know). Here is the scaling issue described in brief:



In one of the Visio Guy's articles, a very powerful formula is provided for auto scaling text in your titleblock when the drawing scale and/or page size changes:

X pt*ThePage!PageScale/ThePage!DrawingScale*Height/Y in

This formula is entered into the Character> Size field of the individual text object's Shape Sheet. This means the Shape Sheet that is viewable when you are selecting the text object. In the formula X equals the original point size and should be entered with the pt suffix. Y equals the original text object height in inches and is unique for each text object selected. ThePage!PageScale, The Page!DrawingScale, & Height are all derived from fields in the Shape Sheet.

6. An extra note on text objects: set the margins to 0pt on all sides. The margin does not scale properly with the formulas you added and can sort of blow away your hard work. It is also difficult to track down unless you are aware of this limitation.




7. A confusing step for me was when I attempted to copy and paste the objects from my original non-SI5 template into the Smart Frame L-scape shape.

a. I attempted this after slecting the shape, clicking edit and selecting Open Landscape Title Frame. The D-Tools help does a better job of describing this.

b. Once I was editing the Title Frame I attempted to simply delete the existing title and paste the objects from mine into the shape. Apparently, pasting multiple objects into the definition of a grouped shape does not go over well. I received errors. It did not work.

c. I attempted to position my title in one file adjacent to the Landscape Title Frame on the screen and simply select and drag across. WOW! It worked. At least I thought it worked. While the result looked good all the automation was broken. It turns out that dragging the selection between files is like dragging an Excel speadsheet into a Word doc. The result is an Excel Object embedded in a Word doc.

d. Ungrouping did not fix this problem. It sort of blew up the objects.

e. In the end, I was forced to copy each object one by one and reset the X & Y values for location in the target file. As I pasted the text items I also entered the formulas from above.

All said and done, I was able to successfully recreate my custom template inside of the fancy new SI5 wrapper that includes cool new features like automatically inserting the title when creating a new sheet and automatically resizing the title as page size and drawing scale change.

I feel like this is one of my first real SI5 victories. Now I can say goodbye to SI4 for good...