new with visio development

[jc]

Hi, I'd like to get some feed back on how to get started with development.

I'm trying to migrate ( Improve ) a design that exists in my company.
Basicly they use excel, as a design and history application. The drew, using
boxes, ovals and lines, 4 basic figures. They would copy pase these images
arround to give a layout of the elements. On each grafical element they
would put enough text to identify and give a basic status of the element. On
other sheets one per element they would keep track on the history,
evolvment, etc.. of each element. Now they want to keep track of mainanece,
accessories and related costs, as well as how much each element produces.
One big problem is that they have 1 exel workbook per location, so ther is
no really easy way to find the location of a specific element, except to
open each workbook and looking for it.

I've thought that it's time to change to visio, develop some custom
elements, and place aditional information on a database, and maintain on one
single file, one sheet per location.

1) My first question is, is visio the tool to use.
2) Do I have to program in a specific language, C++, I'm more comfortable
using .net C# or VB.NE, or is vb script enough.
3) Where do I find examples of custom developments, etc...

Thanks,

Juan

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

MSDN is the place to go for Visio programming. There are links to Visio's
SDK available for download.

Generally, you should create a shape or set of shapes that visually gives
you what you want to display. Then write code to place them in a diagram
and populate them with information. The more you do with the shapes, the
less code you have to write.