6. Nudging Shapes
Two keyboard tricks will help you get shapes aligned when they are off by just a little bit.
You
can nudge shapes up, down, left, or right by tapping any of the arrow
keys while shapes are selected. If you hold the Shift key while
nudging, the shapes move in even finer increments.
The distance moved is in pixels, not a specific
distance on the page. So if you are zoomed way out, nudging moves the
shapes further than when you are zoomed way in. This is very much an
“eyeballing it” feature. If your drawing demands precision, nudging
might not be the best way to get shapes properly positioned.
7. Controlling Front-to-Back Positioning
As you create shapes, the most recent ones appear
“on top.” They obscure any previously-created shapes that happen to be
in the immediate area. However, you don’t have to carefully plan the
order in which you add shapes to a diagram because you can easily
manage their Z-order. Z-order is just a mathy way of saying
front-to-back order. If X is horizontal and Y is vertical, Z is into and out of your computer screen!
In your travels around the Visio interface,
you’ve likely seen four commands for dealing with Z-order: Send
Backward, Send to Back, Bring Forward and Bring to Front.
Bring Forward and Send Backward move shapes in or
out in the Z-order by one level, whereas Bring to Front and Send to
Back move shapes all the way out or in.
There are several places to get at them, including:
Home, Arrange group
Right-click context menu for any shape
Shift+Ctrl+F to bring a selection of shapes to front
Shift+Ctrl+B to send a selection of shapes to back
Note that when you group shapes together, you
effectively create a new shape (the group), which ends up on top. Even
if all the group’s members were behind other shapes to start, they end
up on top. Also, subshapes within a group must belong to the same
Z-order pocket and can’t be interwoven. So subshapes inside of a group
can’t be both in front of and behind other shapes on the page.
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When it comes to shape Z-order, containers offer an exception. Containers know they serve as frames and
backgrounds for other shapes. Even if you add a container on top of
existing shapes, Visio sensibly places it behind those shapes. It
wouldn’t do to hang a picture frame in front of the pictures, now would
it?
Send to Back also behaves differently within
containers. If you send a shape to back, it appears behind other shapes
within the container but isn’t behind the container itself. If you use
Send to Back a second time, however, the shape does
disappear behind the container. Because the shape still belongs to the
container and moves around with it, you may never see the shape again!
If you think you’ve “double-sent” shapes behind a
container, don’t worry. Just select the container itself and send it to
back. Any shapes lurking in Z-order purgatory again become visible on
top of the container!
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Enhancing a 3D Block Diagram Using Z-order
1. | Start a new diagram using the General, Block Diagram template.
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2. | In the Shapes window, activate the Blocks Raised stencil.
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3. | Ensure that the grid is visible. If it isn’t, go to View, Show and check the Grid check box.
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4. | Drop
the Right Arrow shape. Resize it and marvel at how well behaved it is.
The 3D “shadow” and arrowhead maintain proper proportions and don’t
stretch as clip art would. This is Visio SmartShape behavior at its
best.
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5. | For
fun, give it a new fill color and notice that the 3D part automatically
takes a darker shade of the color you choose. More smarts in action.
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6. | Drop the Square Block shape.
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7. | Move
the arrow so that it abuts the edge of the square. With the grid
activated, this should be easy to do. Notice that the extrusion from
the square obscures part of the arrow and looks visually incorrect.
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8. | Right-click
the arrow and choose Bring to Front. Alternatively, right-click the
square and choose Send to Back. The extrusions should no longer
conflict, and your block diagram starts to look better.
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9. | Notice
that the square and the arrow do not blend together because of the line
between them and (perhaps) the different fill color. |
10. | Make
the square the same color as the arrow. First, select the arrow and
then click the Format Painter button in the Home, Clipboard group.
Finally, click on the square. The square should now have the same
formatting as the arrow.
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11. | Heal
the line between the two shapes so that they seamlessly blend together.
Right-click the arrow shape and choose Open Tail. The line at the base
of the arrow should disappear, and the two shapes should flow together,
much like the raised block shapes in Figure 12. Open Tail only works if the arrow is on top of the square, z-order-wise. |
