Chapter 25. Making Shapes Smart

A truly smart shape requires little thought from the user. It just works. For example, a door shape snaps into place on a wall, and a background sizes to fit a page. Shape designers think long and hard about how to improve shape functionality, and often the smartest shapes are the easiest to use. That’s the Smart Shapes riddle.

Anyone with a new idea, however, can alter how a shape behaves. The place to start is in the ShapeSheet window, the Microsoft Office Visio 2007 built-in spreadsheet for defining all the properties of a shape—its size, position, format, behavior, and interactions with other shapes. This chapter takes you beyond the drawing page and into the ShapeSheet window, where smart shapes are created.