Changing the stacking order

When we have different shapes on our drawing page, they all have a certain ranking. In other words, if a particular shape is the first character to have been loaded on the page, its reference number is 1 and the second shape that you have loaded on the page has a rank 2.

For example, if you place the “Office” shape in the drawing page, and then place the “Desk chair” shape. The “Office” shape is ranked 1 and the “Desk chair” is ranked 2.
So when you drag the chair partly above yhe desk, it looks as if this “Desk chair” is on the “Office” shape.
This has to be changed so we’ll have to change the order of the shapes.
To do this, select the shape, “Chair”, on the page, click on “Shape” in the “Menu bar”, select “Order” and click “Send to Back”.
This will put the shape, which in this case, the “Desk chair”, at the back.
If you had placed a flower pot on the desk chair, before you dragged the chair onto the drawing page, then the rank of the desk is three, and you have to move the chair back by one place, or click on the “Send To Back” option.

In other words, the “Send to Back” option places the shape at the back of the drawing. The “Send Backwards” places the shape one position behind its present state.
The same goes for the option “Bring to Front” and “Bring Forward”.

Grouping Shapes:

If we want to treat various shapes as a single shape, we have to first place them in a group.
Select all the shapes and click on the “Group” button found in the “Action toolbar”.
You can select multiple shapes in different ways.
One way is to click with the mouse pointer and drag a marquee around the different shapes.
A second way is to click on the different shapes while the Ctrl key on your keyboard is pressed.

If you want to ungroup the shapes, click on the “Ungroup” button in the “Action toolbar”.
A second way to group or ungroup shapes is to select them, right-click on them, select “Shape” and then click on “Group” or “Ungroup”.

Saving Shapes:

When we create a composite shape which can be used in the future, we can save it as a new shape.
One requirement is that you create your own stencil or that you add the new shape to the stencil, “Favourites”.
You simply can not add shapes to the standard stencils in Visio, for the simple reason that you can not edit these stencils.

First group all the shapes that you want saved as a new shape.
Open the stencil you created or open the stencil “Favorites”.
Right-click on the title of this stencil and select “Edit”.
Click and drag the composite shape in the stencil. Keep the Ctrl key pressed on your keyboard , when you want a copy of the shape on your drawing page.

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