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.