See my first post to get started: Visio/IronPython/Powershell – How to draw nice diagrams from the command line

In this post, I’ll cover how to generate diagrams from tabular, hierarchical data, and directed graphs

Demo 1 – Simple Shape Drawing

Draw some simple shapes

>>> vi.Draw.Rectangle( 0, 0, 1,1 )
>>> vi.Draw.Oval( 2, 2, 3,3 )
>>> vi.Draw.Line( 4, 4, 5,5 )

Drop a master

>>> vi.Drop.Master( "BASIC_U.VSS", "Rectangle", 2, 5 )

Set the text of all the shapes

>>> vi.Select.All()
>>> vi.Text.PlainText = “Hello World”

Lets draw all the fill patterns on a new page

>>> vi.Page.New()
>>> patterns = range(41)
>>> for (i,pattern) in enumerate(patterns):
>>>     vi.Draw.Rectangle( i , 0, i+1, 0+1 )
>>>     vi.Fill.Pattern = pattern
>>> vi.Page.ResizeToFitContents()

Demo 2 – Drawing Tabular Data

The interactive shell extensively uses System.Data.DataTable to store tabular data

>>> data = ( ('Hello',1) , ('World',2) )
>>> datatable = ToDataTable( data )
>>> vi.Draw.Table( datatable )

We can get data from a CSV file

create a CSV file in Excel

And then load it as a DataTable and let Visio Draw it

>>> datatable = vi.Data.ImportCSV( r"D:\saveenr\data1.csv" )
>>> vi.Draw.Table( datatable )

Of course, you can load an XLSX file. In this case, you’ll have to identify the name of the worksheet also…

>>> datatable = vi.Data.ImportExcelWorksheet( r"d:\\data1.xlsx" , "Sheet1" )
>>> vi.Draw.Table( datatable )

Demo 3 – Drawing Hierarchical Data

Let’s draw a tree from a set of directory paths

vi.Page.New()
items=List[System.String]()
items.Add( r'c:' )
items.Add( r'c:\windows' )
items.Add( r'c:\windows\system' )
items.Add( r'c:\windows\system32' )
items.Add( r'c:\windows\tasks' )
items.Add( r'c:\program files' )
items.Add( r'c:\program files\office live' )
items.Add( r'c:\baz' )
dir = Isotope.Drawing.CardinalDirection.Down
tree = vi.Data.PathsToTree( items )
vi.Draw.Tree( tree.Root , dir  )
vi.Page.ResizeToFitContents()
vi.Zoom.ToPage()

Demo 4 – Automatic Layout Directed Graphs

Technical Note: the AutoLayoutDrawing class uses Microsoft’s Automatic Graph Layout library

d= VisioDOM.AutoLayout.AutoLayoutDrawing()
s1= d.AddShape('A')
s2= d.AddShape('B')
s3= d.AddShape('C')
c1 = d.Connect('c1',s1,s2)
c2 = d.Connect('c2',s1,s3)
r = VisioDOM.AutoLayout.AutoLayoutRenderer()
r.RenderToVisio( d , vi.visapp , True)
vi.Zoom.ToPage()

This was a simple example, you can draw much more complicated diagrams using the autolayout feature