Document Stencils

When you draw, a document stencil is created, specifically, for that particular file.
Whenever you drag a shape onto the drawing page, the model of this shape is copied to the document stencil.
To open the document stencil, click on the “Shapes” button in the “Standard toolbar”, and select the “Show Document Stencil” option from the drop-down menu

This is useful if you have been working for hours on your drawing, that contains dozens of different shapes.
The document stencil contains all the shapes that are used, so that you do not have to search all the stencils for a specific shape that you had used previously.

As in the other stencils, in the document stencil also, all shapes are known as model shapes. These can also be dragged onto the drawing page.

Creating a New stencil

The document stencil is useful while creating a single document, but what if we want to use certain shapes in other documents?
Well, “Visio” also gives us the option of creating our own stencils.

To create a stencil, click on the “Shapes” button in the “Standard toolbar”, and select “New stencil” from the drop-down menu.
The new stencil is immediately added, and at the top left portion of the title of this new stencil, you will see a red asterisk, which indicates that we can edit this stencil.
The first thing we do is to save the stencil.
Right-click on the stencil, and select “Save” from the drop-down menu.
This opens the “Save as” dialog box where you can specify a name for the stencil.
The stencil is saved in the “My Shapes” folder.
Click on the “Save” button.

One way to add shapes to the newly created stencil is to first place these shapes on the drawing page, and then drag the shapes to the new stencil.
If you want an element to retain on the drawing page, keep the Ctrl key on your keyboard pressed, while you drag them onto the new stencil.
I’ll show you another way of adding shapes to a stencil, in the next lesson.

If you want to change the name, icon size and other such features of this shape, right click on it in the stencil, select “Edit Master” from the drop-down menu, and click “Properties”.
This opens a dialog box where some options can be specified.
I think all this is quite clear.

In the “Keywords” box you can type words that you want this shape to be found at when you do a search for shapes (see next lesson).

Click OK when you’re done.

If you want to change something in a stencil, for example, if you want to add or remove shapes, you must make sure that this stencil is in the “Edit” mode.
This is symbolized by a red asterisk at the top left of the title bar .

If this is not the case, right-click on the stencil and select “Edit Stencil” from the drop-down menu.

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