Visio VBA function to see if there's a shape in front of/behind a shape

Question

Is there a way in Visio VBA to see if there is a shape in front of or behind a shape in Visio?

I imagine I could write something that checks the bounding box of each shape in a page to see if it occupies the same space as my shape. I'd rather use something built-in since checking each shape could take a long time as a drawing gets more and more shapes.

Answer 1

The Shape.SpatialRelation property will tell you if two shapes touch. The Shape.Index property will tell you which is in front or behind in the z-order.

Here is a simple example:

Public Sub DoShapesIntersect(ByRef shape1 As Visio.Shape, ByRef shape2 As Visio.Shape)

    '// do they touch?
    If (shape1.SpatialRelation(shape2, 0, 0) <> 0) Then

        '// they touch, which one is in front?
        If (shape1.Index > shape2.Index) Then
            Debug.Print shape1.Name + " is in front of " + shape2.Name
        Else
            Debug.Print shape1.Name + " is behind " + shape2.Name
        End If
    Else
        Debug.Print "shape1 and shape2 do not touch"
    End If

End Sub

Read more here:

Shape.SpatialRelation Property on MSDN