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Each component can include an identifying tag, which can be hidden or customized. In addition, component shapes can include properties that store real-world data, such as a component's temperature rating or the line size of a pipeline, as Figure 27-26 shows. You can display custom property data on the drawing page as part of a component's tag or as a custom text label called a callout shape.
Figure 27-26. You can use intelligent callout shapes to label the components in your diagram.
When you associate a callout shape with a component, you can specify the value to use as a label, as Figure 27-27 shows. Visio updates the callout's label if you edit the component's properties.
Follow these steps to set up a callout:
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Figure 27-27. You can display component information using custom callout shapes on the Process Annotations stencil.
You can also display information about a shape directly in the shape's tag, or label. By default, the shape's tag is displayed. You can hide it by right-clicking the shape and choosing Hide Tag; and you can show it by right-clicking the shape and choosing Show Tag. For details about setting up a tag format to display the values for specific properties, see the next section, "Tagging Components."
Each component has a unique tag that Visio Professional uses to identify and track it. When you first drag a shape to the drawing page, Visio labels it with a unique component tag based on the tag format associated with the master shape. If there are multiple shapes associated with a component, each of those shapes has the same tag. For example, when you drop a valve on a pipeline, the pipe is split into two shapes, one on either side of the valve, but both pipe segments have the same tag. This ensures that the correct information is listed for each of the shapes when one of the shapes is updated.
By default, the component tag is composed of the tag name and a one-digit counter. So, for example, if you drag a pump shape onto a new drawing, the pump is tagged Pump-1. If you drag another pump onto the page, it is tagged Pump-2.
You can change the tag for a shape by editing the shape's text manually, which isn't a particularly efficient method of tagging large numbers of components. Visio provides a more efficient way to write tags quickly and consistently. You can apply a tag format to shapes. The tag format, composed of alphanumeric text and component data, provides the rules that Visio Professional follows when tagging a component. And if the existing tag formats don't meet your needs, you can customize them.
You can apply a tag format to an individual shape, multiple selected shapes, or a master on a stencil, including the document stencil, which is the quickest way to update all the shapes in a drawing.
To apply a tag format to one or more shapes on the drawing page, follow these steps:
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To customize the tagging scheme used in your diagram, you can create and edit the tag format Visio applies to component shapes. Tags can be pretty smart—you can display the value of custom properties in a tag, automatically number component tags in sequence, and display more than one line of information. With the Edit Tag Formats command on the Process Engineering menu, you can revise the format used for existing tags, as Figure 27-28 shows. Or you can create a new tag format, which you can apply to shapes with the Apply Tag Format command.
Figure 27-28. You can use the Edit Tag Formats command to customize the appearance of tags.
The format for a tag is based on a tag expression, which is similar to the Visio text fields that insert file information. A tag expression can include punctuation and fields that are set off in square brackets ([ ]) as you can see in Figure 27-28. Visio evaluates the value of the field to display the tag on the shape. For example, if a tag expression includes the custom property Line Size, Visio inserts the value for the shape's Line Size custom property. If you haven't entered a value for Line Size, the tag displays nothing.
To number components, you can add a counter to a tag expression. Visio increments the counter field in one of two ways:
By default, a counter includes only one digit, but you can specify two or more digits. Visio inserts leading zeros to fill the number of digits you specify. For example, if you specify two digits, the first pump in a diagram is labeled Pump - 01 and the hundredth pump is labeled Pump - 100.
To delete or rename an existing tag format, choose Process Engineering, Edit Tag Formats, which opens the Edit Tag Formats dialog box, as Figure 27-29 shows. Select the tag format, and then click Delete or Rename. If you're renaming the tag format, type a new name and then click elsewhere in the dialog box. Click OK to close the dialog box.
Figure 27-29. To revise or create a tag format, use the Edit Tag Formats command on the Process Engineering menu.
Follow these steps to create a new tag format:
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To help you distinguish one pump or valve from another, Visio assigns each component a number when it's added to the diagram. For example, the first pump you drag to the page is tagged Pump-1, and the second is Pump-2. You can change the way components are numbered automatically with the Renumber Components command, as Figure 27-30 shows. Tag numbers are incremented as you add shapes, and the format of the number itself is determined by the tag format as described in the previous section. But if you've deleted components or want to count different kinds of components separately, Visio can renumber component shapes based on criteria that you provide. After you renumber components, new component shapes are numbered incrementally where the last component numbers left off.
Figure 27-30. You can specify how you want Visio to renumber component shapes.
Follow these steps to renumber components:
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