3 - Visio Masters, Stencils, Templates, and Documents

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Whether you're planning a standardized drawing solution that includes new shapes you've developed or a custom application that integrates Microsoft Visio functionality into a larger system, you'll find that masters, stencils, templates, and documents are the primary components of most Visio solutions. As you design your solution, you'll want to consider how you use these components to best suit your needs.

You can distribute shapes you develop as reusable masters on a stencil. A stencil is like a software library in which you can collect the shapes you build for later reuse. You can also create a template that opens particular stencils and specifies page settings, layer information, styles, shapes, predrawn elements such as title boxes, and macros, which makes it simple to deliver a custom solution to users. The Visio documents you create contain the same common information, but the file name extension you use determines how the file appears to the user.

This chapter introduces these elements, and provides tips for making your solutions as efficient as possible.