Microsoft Visio 2013 : Adding Sophistication to Your Drawings - Grouping shapes

In the Shapes window, click the Department stencil if it is not already selected.

Drag a Headquarters shape to the drawing page and use the Dynamic Grid to position it at the top center of the page. The two Dynamic Grid lines provide visual assurance that you are at the top center.

On the status bar, click either the Width or Height button to open the Size & Position window.

In the Size & Position window, double both the Width and Height to 2 inches for US units or 60 mm. for metric. The increased height of the shape has triggered the Auto Size feature and Visio has added a new page above the current page.

Press the Down Arrow key until the resized shape is at the top margin of the original page.

Drag the following shapes onto the page and position them around the headquarters icon: Customer Service, Management, Legal Department, Human Resources.

Draw a bounding box around all five shapes.

On the Home tab, in the Arrange group, click the Group Objects button, and then click Group. Notice that the blue selection rectangles around the individual shapes have disappeared, indicating that the group operation was successful.

Drag the group to the upper-left corner of the page. All shapes that are part of the group move together.

Click anywhere on the page background to deselect the group.

Click once on any shape in the group. Notice that the entire group is selected.

With the group still selected, click once on the Legal Department shape. The selection rectangle around the group changes from a solid line with resize handles to a dashed line to indicate that the group no longer has the focus. The Legal Department shape, on the other hand, now displays resize handles and a rotation handle, because it is now the selected shape.

The default behavior for grouped shapes is what you have observed in the preceding two steps: the first click selects the group; the second click selects a shape within the group. It is possible to change this behavior, but you won’t do that in this exercise.

Click the dashed line surrounding the group to change the focus back to the group.

Drag the lower-right resize handle to enlarge the group. Notice that all shapes within the group resize proportionally.

Drag a Bank shape from the Department stencil and drop it somewhere within the boundary of the group.

Select and drag the group back to the center of the page. Dropping a shape onto a group does not add it to the group.

Right-click any shape in the group, then on the context menu, click Group, and then click Ungroup. The shapes remain on the page, but Visio removes the group. Any styles, text, or data associated with the group are now gone as well. Once again, each shape now shows its own selection rectangle.