Visio ActiveX Control

Microsoft Office Visio 2003 ActiveX control, known as Visio drawing control, provides the functionality of the Visio application object model. As a result, you can embed the ActiveX control in the host applications developed using Visual Studio .Net 2003 and use the Visio user interface to create and work with interactive Visio drawings and shapes .

Visio drawing control with .NET framework allows you to develop new Visio solutions that could not be generated earlier using programming platforms, such as Visual Studio and other versions of Visual Studio .NET. You can use a PIA for managed-code access to the Visio drawing control API. If you want to use the drawing control from the managed code provided by the .NET framework, you need to install the Visio PIA.

You need to install Visio on your computer before you create the host application. All end users must also install Visio on their computers to use the host application. Both Microsoft Office Visio Standard 2003 and Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2003 provide the Visio drawing control.

Embedding Visio Drawing Control

You can embed the Visio drawing control in a Windows form or an OLE container, such as Microsoft Word. An embedded Visio drawing control in a .NET Windows form provides more functionality as compared to an embedded control in an OLE container document. For example, a Visio drawing, as an OLE object, does not allow you to programmatically access the Visio document from the host application that contains the Visio drawing control.

Visio Drawing Control and Visio Application

Visio drawing control as an embeddable component in a .NET application provides less features than the Visio application. The drawing control has the following limitations:

• Supports Single Document Interface (SDI) windows. As a result, one window can contain only one drawing.

• Does not allow you to access the ShapeSheet window, but you can program the ShapeSheet window.

  Note  

  A ShapeSheet window allows the Visio end users to view and modify the properties of shapes in a Visio drawing.

• Does not let you use COM-based Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) procedures. To use existing VBA code, you need to write the code in the .NET host application.