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rauenpcFlag for United States of America

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Use Visio shape data to display another shape

I'm learning about shape data and shape data linking (for professional use, not as a student) to see if it would allow me to bring my detailed networking diagrams to the next level as well as make me more efficient. I learned about shape data linking and it works pretty awesome. I am able to link to a spreadsheet, display necessary items and also have more shape data that doesn't appear on the diagram as printed. This so far has been great.

Is there a way to use shape data to display another shape?

So take one of my standard shapes that I use. It's a rectangle object inside of another rectangle. I also put the most accurate visio stencil I can get for the model. Would there be a way to cause that stencil of the switch to appear based on the model defined in the shape data?

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It would be great because as equipment is replaced/upgraded, I could update the spreadsheet, update the visio linking, and automatically have the stencil reflect the correct model switch.
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Chris Roth
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Fair enough. That's about what I was thinking, but figured I'd ask to see if someone new of some simple magic to make this happen. Since part of my goal is to make a template out of this to allow other people to build diagrams, using something as advanced as coding would likely be a recipe for disaster outside of my own diagrams. Thanks for the input!
Well, that's the beauty of having the image inside of a group - the code swaps the image out based on data changes, but your diagram remains in tact - connections and data wouldn't be tampered with since you'd be going inside the group. Something for version 2.0, eh?