You can use the Link to Product feature to link any Visio shape to an SI product. You can then create a new Master shape for use in projects. You can create your own custom Visio shapes or link third-party Visio shapes to your SI catalog, e.g., NetZoom.

To link a Visio shape to a product:

1/ Create or drag in a shape that you want to link to a product.

If you used multiple shapes to create your final shape, select them all and group them.

2/ Right-click on the grouped shape and click Show ShapeSheet.

3/ In the ShapeSheet, change the value of SelectMode from 1 to 0.

4/ Close the ShapeSheet window.

5/ Back on the Visio page, right-click the shape and choose D-Tools > Link to Product > New.

The Add Products form will open.

6/ Select a product and then click the Add and Close button.

This shape is now linked to that product within this project, and the product is added to Project Editor.

If, instead, you choose to link to an existing product, a form opens allowing you to select a product that is already a part of the project.

To be able to reuse this shape on future projects, you must create a new Master shape. You can add the shape to an existing D-Tools Visio stencil, or you can create a new stencil.

1/ In the Visio Shapes window, select More Shapes > New Stencil (either US or Metric).

The stencil will be created and will be open for editing.

2/ Drag your shape into the stencil.

A new Master shape will be created.

3/ Rename the shape and then click the Save button.

For this Stencil to display with your SI Visio stencils, you must navigate and save it to the following folder on your machine: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\D-Tools\SIX\Data\Drawings\Visio

1/ In the D-Tools Shapes window, right-click the stencil you want to use and select Open Stencil.

The Stencil will open in the Shapes window.

2/ Right-click on the title bar of the stencil and select Edit Stencil.

3/ Drag your shape into the Stencil.

4/ Click the Save button.

There is no need to select a path since this stencil already exists.

It is a good idea to lock the Stencil now, so if we (D-Tools) release updated stencils, yours won't get overwritten.

Now you can use your custom shape(s) just as you would any stock D-Tools shape. If you drag the shape directly to a Visio page, the Add Product form will open and be filtered to the product you have assigned the shape, acting as a one-to-one relationship vs. a one-to-many.

However, you can select any product from your SI catalog simply by clicking the Reset button in the Filter and Query section of the ribbon.