The Wire Run shape is designed for use on Plan pages in Visio, along with a scaled floor plan, to enable more accurate estimation of the length of a wire run. The length can then be applied to existing wires in a project (for unapproved projects), or you can add new wires to the project and apply the wire length to them.
If you don't see this shape, click Manage Stencils in your Stencil Tree and click Download. This will open a form showing new and updated stencils that you can download. You will want to download the Wire Shapes stencil.
This shape will display whatever units you have set for the Visio page in Page Properties.
The wire length will always be converted to either feet or meters when applying to wires, based on whether you are using imperial or metric measurements.
This shape measurement value is also based on the Page Scale for the Visio Page, so if you are using this shape on top of a floor plan, you will want to make sure that your floor plan is inserted to scale.
To use the shape, first drag and drop it onto the Visio page.
The shape has five sections by default and thus five midpoints.
To achieve your desired path, you can move any midpoint, which will add more sections to the shape.
To do this, mouse over a midpoint until you see a double arrow.
Click Shift on your keyboard, and then click the mouse button and drag the midpoint in the desired direction.
Now you will have more "bends" in your Wire Run shape.
Now, drag the Wire Run shape's endpoints and midpoints to represent the path of the wire on the Visio page.
For this shape, it doesn't matter which ends of the shape are the "To" and "From" ends; this shape is just for calculating the length of the wire run.
You can then right-click the Wire Run shape and select Apply Wire Length to apply this length to either existing wires or add new wires to the project and assign them this wire length.
This will open the following interface.
Here you will see the length of the Wire Run shape in the "Wire Length on Wire Run Shape" field converted to either feet or meters (depending on your page settings in Visio).
You can adjust this value manually in the "Wire Length to Apply" field, or you can choose to add a contingency, either a percentage or a whole number. You might do this to account for wall height or to provide a buffer for the wire run length.
You can choose to apply the wire length to existing wires in the project (for unapproved projects). Select the wire(s) in the grid and click the Apply Wire Length button.
You will get a confirmation.
You can also click the Add Bulk Wire button if you want to add bulk wire to the project.
This will open the Add Product form prefiltered to only bulk wire in your catalog.
Once you've selected the wires you want to add, click the Add and Close button you will be prompted to assign a head end to the wires (optional.)
Once you've applied the length to either existing wires or added new wires, it is up to you whether to delete the Wire Run shape from the page and drag the actual wires onto the page, or keep the Wire Run shape on the page for reference.