Working with Groups

Up to this point in the book, you've worked with simple individual shapes, such as rectangles, circles, and lines. However, many Visio shapes are made up of several shapes. This type of Visio shape is called a grouptwo or more shapes that function as a unit. For instance, the title block shapes onthe Borders and Titles stencil are groups composed of boxes, lines, circles, text, and so on. Instead of dragging each individual piece of a title block onto the drawing page, you can drag the group onto the page. Instead of moving or resizing each piece on the drawing page, you can resize or move the group. You can even rotate a group by using the rotation handle that appears on the group when you select it.

Even though the shapes in a group function as a unit, you can still work with the shapes individually. However, the shapes within groups are often lockedprotected against particular types of changesto prevent you from deleting or inadvertently moving them individually when you intended to move the whole group. In other words, you can work with the individual shapes in groups, but your actions are limited depending on the group.

When you subselect a shape you want to work with in the group, if that shape is locked, its selection handles are gray instead of green. To subselect a shape within a group, select the group, and then select the individual shape. For example, you can subselect the text in a title block group to replace the placeholder text with your own title and change the text attributes, but you can't delete or move the locked text-only shape.

In this short exercise, you practice selecting, moving, and resizing groups. Then you subselect a shape within a group to work with it individually.

1.	On the File menu, point to New, point to General, and then click Block Diagram. Visio opens a blank drawing page and four stencils.
2.	Click the title bar of the Borders and Titles stencil to display the shapes on the stencil.
3.	From the Borders and Titles stencil, drag the Title blockcompass shape onto the drawing page. You might need to zoom in on the shape to see it better. The shape is selected on the drawing page. Because groups are 2-D shapes, the selection box includes eight selection handles and one round rotation handle.
4.	Click the Title place holder text. Visio subselects the text-only shape within the group.
5.	Type Tradeshow. Visio opens the shape's text block, replaces the place holder text with the new text, and resizes the title block to accommodate the text.
6.	Click the gray box below the title to subselect it.
7.	On the Formatting toolbar, click the Fill Color down arrow, and then under Theme Colors, click the top red color (Accent 1) on the palette.   Color Visio changes the color of the box to red. The rest of the shapes in the group are unaffected.
8.	On the File menu, click Close, and then click No to close the drawing without saving the changes.