A Microsoft Office Visio solution is a combination of Visio shapes and programs that model the real world and solve drawing problems. A Visio solution usually includes shapes that the user can drag and drop onto the drawing page to quickly create a drawing; templates for new drawings that predefine the drawing size and drawing scale; and programs that help create the drawing, analyze the drawing, or transfer information between the drawing and external data sources.

To help you create solutions, the Visio development environment provides the following:

• The ShapeSheet spreadsheet, which lets you create formulas for specific shape appearance and behavior.
• Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) with which you can create macros and control Visio using Automation. If you have ever used VBA in another Microsoft Office System program, you'll be familiar with the environment in Visio. You can also use the Macro Recorder to quickly create VBA code that you can then view or modify.
• The Visio type library, which describes the objects, properties, methods, events, constants, and interfaces that Visio exposes to Automation clients.

About writing Visio programs

About programming shapes